Chapter 14
After Rasika’s lunch with Yuvan, things came to a standstill for a few days. His mother called and said they were going to do some sort of pooja before making a final decision. Oddly, during this time Rasika herself was almost ignored. No one seemed to think it necessary to consult with her or pay her any special attention, although Mridula Auntie did take Rasika to the ayurvedic doctor who had helped Mayuri. Rasika came home with a yellow skin cream and some bitter herbal tea.
Every day her mother and aunt inspected her skin, supervised the application of her ointment, and brewed the herbal tea for her. Everyone was pleased that the pimples were disappearing. Yet no one noticed that Rasika had hardly eaten since arriving in India and that she was having trouble sleeping, which was unusual for her. Sleep was generally the one thing she could count on to take her away from her problems.
Rasika spent time with her grandmother, helping her gather jasmine blossoms in the garden and tying the blossoms into short garlands. Pati had taught her this skill many years ago, and Rasika found it soothing to sit in the sunshine and loop and knot pairs of flowers by the stems. Then Pati would hand around these garlands so the women of the household could pin them into their hair.
“What was it like when you got married, Pati?” Rasika asked one morning. They sat on a bench in the backyard, their heads shaded by a crape myrtle tree. Rasika stretched her bare feet into the warm sunshine. They were somewhat insulated by the house and yard from the usual sounds of the city: traffic beeping and rumbling, someone’s radio broadcasting a male voice, and a female chorus singing a rhythmic Hindi movie song.
“I was very keen to get married.” Pati chuckled. “The wedding was an excuse to get dressed up for three days in a row. Back then weddings used to go on for three days, but nowadays no one has the patience for all that.” Pati spoke in Tamil, slowly and calmly, as though she had all the time in the world.
“You were only sixteen,” Rasika said.
“I was born in 1940, and married in 1956. At that time, among our people, girls were married at fifteen or sixteen. If you reached eighteen and you were unmarried, you were considered old for a bride. We thought we were very modern because we did not believe in child marriage. The girls finished schooling before marriage, after all. We started school early in those days. By the age of four I was in school, so by fifteen I was finished with tenth standard. No one thought of college for girls in those days.”
Rasika knew that her other grandmother, her father’s mother, hadn’t even been allowed to finish tenth grade—the end of high school in India—before getting married. “What about Ammachi?” she asked. “She was only fourteen.”
“She is quite a bit older to me,” Pati said. “From her time to my time, things changed for women.”
“Was it difficult to decide which man to marry?” Rasika picked two more blossoms from the basket between them. The maidservant exited the back door of the house with a basket of wet clothes from the washing machine, and began pinning the garments to the clothesline.
“No one asked me. My parents chose. Maybe it was difficult for them. I don’t know.” Pati held the blossoms deftly in her left hand. Her right hand made a loop of the cotton thread and pulled it tightly around the stems. Her fingers were still supple. “One day they told me that I was going to marry so-and-so. I had never seen him. Nowadays, girls have much more say. You go here and there with the boys, even before engagement. In those days, we didn’t have any choice at all. Only after marriage did we go about with our husbands.”
“Were you afraid to marry someone you didn’t know?”
“I didn’t even know what marriage was. I just thought about the wedding—being the center of attention. I was considered quite beautiful then. Everyone talked about my beauty, and it went to my head.”
“You are still very beautiful, Pati,” Rasika said.
Pati smiled. “I was very interested in saris and jewelry.” Pati held up a string of flowers and considered its length. “I would always be thinking about what sari I wanted to ask my father to buy for me. If anyone wore new jewelry, I would inspect it carefully.”
“Really?” Since Rasika had known her, Pati had seemed most interested in cooking and chanting prayers. She could hardly imagine Pati as a teenager obsessed with clothes. “What was it like after you got married?”
“My mother-in-law was very particular. She was not a bad woman, but I had to do exactly as she wished. She told me when to get up in the morning, how to cut the vegetables, what prayers to say, when to wash my hair. That was all fine. I did not mind working and following orders.” Pati knotted her thread, snapped it off the spool, and set the flowers in the basket. “But she also told me what to wear and not wear. That was the difficult part for me. She bought me so much jewelry—heavy gold necklaces.” Pati mimed the width of the necklaces against her collarbone. “Thick bangles. I wanted something light and delicate. She bought me heavy silk saris in dull colors with lots of gold embroidery, but I wanted something bright.” Pati picked up the spool and measured out another length of thread against her arm.
“Pati, you mean you never chose your own clothes?” Rasika was horrified.
“My mother-in-law bought all the clothes for me. I had many saris.”
“You didn’t choose anything for yourself?” Rasika asked again in disbelief.
“After all, we must not think about clothes all the time. I became a mother, and then I stopped worrying about my saris, finally.”
Rasika had been so absorbed in this story that she’d only managed to connect a total of six flowers. She picked up two more flowers from the basket, and then rested her hands on her lap. She felt a weight around her heart at the thought of what her grandmother had had to go through. Pati had to give up even her smallest inclinations and desires once she was married.
Nowadays—was it better? After marriage, Rasika would have her own job, her own money, her own clothes. Yet she was not completely free. Her parents had let her meet a few eligible bachelors, but in effect, they too had told her that she was going to marry so-and-so. And she had agreed. In fact, her biggest worry now was that Mr. So-and-So would reject her.
When Yuvan’s acceptance was conveyed through his father, Rasika was so relieved that she exclaimed, “Tell them I also accept.”
“Don’t worry, we have already told them,” her mother said.
Two days later, the engagement ceremony took place at the house. All the furniture was moved out of the living room and bedsheets were spread over the floor for people to sit on.
Again, her aunt dressed Rasika and applied too much makeup. It seemed to Rasika that she was a doll they were playing with in their game of “the perfect wedding.” Although it was supposed to be a small gathering, all sorts of relatives crowded into the house to observe the ceremony: Appa’s siblings and their families, Amma’s distant cousins. Subhash and his family were there, too.
Rasika tried not to look at Yuvan’s father. She knew, intellectually, that he was not really Kanchan, but whenever she saw his face, her mind flashed to that evening in the hotel, and she felt panic and the urge to run away. During the ceremony, as she sat on the wooden platform at one end of the room, she kept her eyes down, as a modest bride should.
After the engagement ceremony, as Yuvan and Rasika stood at one end of the room accepting blessings and greetings, the crowd parted. Appa’s mother was being led toward them. Thin and bent, gripping a walker in her clawlike hands, she thumped slowly toward them, with Balu Uncle pressing the crowd back from her. When she stood in front of Rasika, Amma said, “Do namaskar to Ammachi,” and Rasika and Yuvan both obediently kneeled in front of the old woman and touched their foreheads to the floor. Ammachi blessed them by sprinkling raw turmeric-colored rice over them. When Rasika rose from the floor, her grandmother gripped Rasika’s hand in her claw, and stood there for several seconds, her hand shaking, her lips working. Finally she said, “You have come home to marry. Now I can die in peace.”
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nbsp; As the old woman hauled herself away, Amma whispered, “She always says things like that. Don’t worry.”
That evening, Rasika stayed at home with a headache. Everyone else in the house went out to the ISKCON temple, which, her uncle informed them, was the largest Hare Krishna temple in the world. She didn’t want to endure a long car ride and then jostle among thousands of other tourists.
In the room she was sharing with Mayuri, she swallowed a couple of painkillers and then sat up in bed, sipping water from a steel cup. The window was open, and a soft evening breeze wafted into the room, bringing with it sounds of street vendors calling out their wares, the grinding of traffic, and whiffs of smell: the acrid scent of burning trash, and the oniony smell of fried food. As the headache faded, she was surprised to discover that tears were running down her face.
“What is it?” Pati had appeared at the side of her bed. “Why are you crying, raja?” Pati sat down next to her, put her strong fingers against Rasika’s temples, and massaged firmly.
“I thought you went with them.” Rasika took another sip of water.
“I have already seen that temple. Lie down. You are exhausted.” Pati took the cup away from Rasika and patted Rasika’s shoulder. “Go to sleep now.”
Rasika obediently lay down. “Pati, stay with me.” She rolled onto her side and grasped her grandmother’s hand. “I feel so sad.”
“Sometimes it happens like that after a lot of excitement. You will feel better in the morning.”
“I don’t know if I made the right decision, Pati.”
Pati began massaging Rasika’s head with her free hand. “We pray to God, and make the best decisions we can.”
“What if—what if I’m marrying the wrong boy?” Rasika said this almost to herself.
“What other boy is there? Hm?” Pati’s fingers worked on the nape of Rasika’s neck. “Don’t worry. One boy is just as good as another. Tomorrow you will feel better.”
Rasika closed her eyes and tried to relax, but her mind kept racing. She felt as if all the guests at the ceremony were swarming toward her, led by her crippled grandmother. “What if there is another boy?” she asked softly.
Pati’s fingers stopped. “What are you saying?” she asked gently. “Is there someone else you want to marry?”
Rasika put both hands up to cover her face. “I don’t know.”
Pati grasped Rasika’s wrists and pulled the hands away from her face. Her sharp eyes penetrated into Rasika’s eyes. “If there is someone else, you must speak up now.”
“But they won’t approve.” Rasika closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at Pati.
Pati let go of Rasika’s wrists. “Listen to me. Sit up, open your eyes, and listen to me.”
Rasika sat up. She opened her eyes but kept them focused down on her hands in her lap. For the engagement ceremony, Mayuri had decorated Rasika’s palms with intricate henna designs. She concentrated on following the spirals and flowers Mayuri had drawn.
Pati put both hands on either side of Rasika’s head and turned the head so Rasika had to look at Pati. “Now is the time to speak. If you don’t speak, you must not speak after marriage.”
Rasika nodded.
“Is there someone else?” Pati demanded softly.
Rasika looked into Pati’s eyes. What would Pati say if she knew about Rasika’s life? She would be shocked. Rasika couldn’t let everyone down now, after she had come so far. “No,” she whispered. She shook her head, with Pati’s hands still on either side of her face. “No.”
During the engagement ceremony, Yuvan’s parents had given Rasika thousands of rupees as a gift. “We wanted to give you something, but we want you to select your own gifts, so you will use them,” Yuvan’s mother said, and everyone agreed this was very sensible.
The next day, Rasika was sent shopping with Mayuri, who would help Rasika select only the most fashionable outfits. They attempted to walk along the narrow sidewalk on Commercial Street, which most of the time was blocked by merchandise displayed outside of shops, or by A-frame sidewalk signs advertising the wares of a shop. She and Mayuri jostled among all the other shoppers and tried to stay out of the way of the cars and motor scooters that attempted to squeeze their way down the narrow street.
“You’re so lucky, Rasika.” They carefully stepped past a shop bursting with frilly little girls’ dresses. “You’ve fallen in love with a man who is acceptable to your parents.”
“I haven’t really fallen in love with him,” Rasika said. “I’m not even sure he likes me.”
“He has agreed to marry you! Of course he likes you. He is not a very emotional person, but I don’t think he would agree to marry someone he didn’t like. Everyone is talking about what a great match it is. You’re very lucky.”
Rasika and Mayuri were accosted by a young man holding a wooden snake in his hand. “Snake, madam?” he asked politely. On Commercial Street, even the pavement peddlers spoke in English.
“Go away,” Mayuri said.
Undaunted, the peddler walked along with them, holding the snake by the tail and demonstrating how it could sway in the air because of its jointed construction. “Three hundred rupees,” he said. He was dressed in a nice plaid woven shirt and long pants, with sandals on his feet.
“Go,” Mayuri commanded.
“Chess set?” The young man produced a travel-size wooden chess set. He opened its tiny drawers to reveal the minute chess pieces.
Rasika couldn’t help laughing. He looked like he was about sixteen years old, with a hint of a mustache on his upper lip. They escaped him only by entering a random store, where they pretended to look at shelves of men’s polo shirts.
“Rasika, I must tell you something.” Mayuri unfolded a shirt, held it up in front of her face, and said softly, from behind the shirt, “My misfortune is that I have fallen in love with the wrong man. He is the most honest, caring person I have ever met. And he is extremely smart. He didn’t do well in school because he is not good at memorizing. He is more of a big-picture person. He has a great business sense. He will be very wealthy someday. But I will never be allowed to marry him, only because he is a Muslim.” Mayuri said all this in a rush, although her voice continued to be quiet.
Rasika was surprised Mayuri would talk about her personal life in public like this. There were no other customers in the small, air-conditioned shop, and the four or five employees were standing around, looking attentive. Unlike stores in the United States, where it was often difficult to find anyone to help you, in India the salesclerks were everywhere. This shop even had someone just to open the door for customers.
“How did you meet him?” Rasika asked softly.
“He works with me.” Mayuri lowered the shirt and stepped closer to Rasika. “He was my trainer. He was so gentle and patient, Rasika. I started to love him from the first day of training.”
“Will you marry him anyway?” Rasika asked. She wondered how Mridula Auntie would react to her oldest daughter marrying not just out of their caste, but out of their religion altogether.
“I don’t know what to do. His family will also disapprove. He is afraid to ask their permission.”
Rasika looked out the glass doors of the shop. The young peddler was nowhere in sight. “Shall we go?”
Mayuri clutched a shirt to her chest. “I want you to meet him. I want someone in my family to understand. He is so beautiful, I cannot live without him.”
All the male salesclerks were gazing at them with interest. Rasika hustled Mayuri out of the store.
As they were sorting through the kurtis at the Stylish Shop, which, despite its silly name, was one of Rasika’s favorite stores in Bangalore, Mayuri told her all sorts of things about Khaleel: how he planned to start his own outsourcing business, but he didn’t know exactly in what field yet; how he had secretly bought her a necklace—he had a cousin in the jewelry business. She tugged a chain out from under her blouse. “I don’t dare wear it at home, in case Amma asks me about it.”
Mayuri tucked the necklace away again. “I don’t like to lie.” She shoved a line of blouses down the bar and eased out a hanger.
Rasika threw another blouse over the pile of clothes already on her arm. She didn’t like to lie either, and now that she was going to be Yuvan’s wife, at least she would never again be compelled to utter an untruth.
“He lives near the Lalbagh gardens.” Mayuri held up a patterned brown top and made a face at it. “Who would buy such an ugly thing, without any sparkle?” She attempted to squeeze the blouse back onto the rack, but someone else had shoved all the clothes down in their direction, so Mayuri flung the blouse underneath the rack. “Anyway, sometimes I arrange to meet a friend at Lalbagh, and he walks over, and I see him that way.” Mayuri pushed her way through the crowd to another rack of clothes. “I will take you to meet him one day.”
As soon as they left the shop with their bulging bags, they heard a voice: “Madam, just one hundred rupees for snake. Please look, madam.” The boy followed them, holding out his chess set, lowering his price to fifty rupees as they attempted to maneuver through the crowd. At the corner, they leaped into a newly vacated autorickshaw, giggling at their escape. “MG Road,” Mayuri shouted to the driver, and then sat back, cradling her bag on her lap. “There’s a nice restaurant there. We’ll get juice or ice cream or something, and then go home.”
As they buzzed and bumped along, Rasika heard the melody of her cell phone. She’d managed to get an Indian SIM card inserted into her phone. She looked at the display, and her heart sank. It was Yuvan. She hurried to answer. “Hello?”
“My meeting was canceled,” he said. “Where are you?”
Since they’d agreed to be married, Yuvan called her every day, although they often didn’t have much to say to each other. Rasika got the impression that Yuvan was determined to do the appropriate thing by her, but she didn’t sense much enthusiasm. Perhaps he was never particularly excited.
And Laughter Fell From the Sky Page 23