One day I had a bright idea. Tagging closely behind my father — everyone knew I was his son — I hung back just long enough to demand the change from the vendor. What could he do? I pocketed the change and caught up with my father at the next stall. My father never discovered my ruse, but the vendors were not happy at all!
I cannot say that I really ever knew my father in any meaningful sense. He took his success very seriously and I think he loved us in the dutiful, almost obligatory way that some fathers love their children. He wasn’t mean or aggressive with us; quite the opposite. He would do whatever he needed to do to protect us, to help us succeed in whatever path we chose, but that was as far as it went. He was unfailingly generous, but he had no capacity for intimacy, at least not with children. He treated his family as he managed his business. He wanted us to be successful, and he did his best to provide. To me, however, he was a cold and distant satellite in my emotional universe.
CHAPTER 5
For women there is no ornament more valuable than their husbands.
— Valmiki Ramayana Sundara Kanda
My mother, Yogambal Tharmathurai, came from a small farming village called Mulliyawalai, about sixty miles inland from Sangkaththaanai. In those days, that was a very long way away.
Her father worked on a modest farm. I remember my grandfather as an incredibly hard-working man who was in the fields by five in the morning and rarely returned home before the sun went down. He was kind, too, and was always very good to me. He shaved infrequently and I can still recall the feeling of his sharp whiskers on my face as he greeted me with a kiss when I visited him.
When my parents married, my mother left her hometown to move in with my father in Sangkaththaanai. It must have been difficult leaving her family behind and suddenly living among a brand-new family she did not know.
In the photographs I have seen of my mother as a young woman — she was about eighteen when she was married — she was beautiful. She had big eyes and long, lustrous hair, and when I was a child she wore colourful saris and lots of jewellery. Every morning, she would put the red pottu on her forehead as well as the traditional thali necklace. “It means I am married to your father,” she told me.
The thali she devotedly wore had been fastened around her neck by my father on their wedding day. My mother loved my father deeply; she was also a devoted Hindu who took her role as wife and mother very seriously. She disciplined us and made sure that we respected not only my father but also my older brother, Lathy. The eldest son was next in line to the father in terms of deserving respect. It was the eldest son who would inherit the family business; not only that, he would inherit all the responsibilities and obligations that came with being head of the family.
In Hindu culture, a wife is absolutely required to remain faithful to her husband, no matter what. There is a passage in the great Hindu holy text the Mahabharata that reads, “Women have one eternal duty in this world, viz., dependence upon and obedient service to their husbands, and as such, this one duty constitutes their only end.” It is an extremely difficult passage to read today, especially for us in the West, but Hindu women of that time in Sri Lanka — women like my mother — took their traditional obligations seriously. I must admit I have had a very hard time coming to terms with her commitment to my father, especially now, as a father myself to children who thrive in a completely different environment.
Wedding photo of Aiya (Father) and Amma (Mother), 1963.
Early one morning when I was six years old, I was sleeping on a mat on the floor, as usual. I was awakened by a young woman, around seventeen years old, sweeping the cement floor next to me. I opened my eyes, confused, and stared at her, wondering what she was doing in our home. Immediately, I got up and went to look for my mother.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“She is my sister,” Mother replied.
“What is she doing here?”
“She came with your father last night,” she replied. I noticed she had tears in her eyes.
I had no idea what was going on. I was too young to understand. But slowly, as the days went by, I realized my aunt was now living with us. My father never mentioned her or explained why she was at our house, but he doted on her and seemed overly friendly. I would hear them whispering together late at night, and my aunt would often stay with my father in his bedroom.
At the same time, my father seemed to drift away from my mother. Often, they would not speak for weeks.
My father would take my aunt out with him in the evening but not my mother. He owned a shiny white Peugeot 404, and he liked to drive my aunt to the movies and Lions Club parties. She was much younger than my mother, and I suspect my father enjoyed showing off his new trophy mistress. For formality’s sake, he would take my mother to the temple, weddings, and other local events. But when it came time for fun, it was always my aunt he spent time with. My father was living two separate lives.
Deep down, I harboured a heavy resentment toward my father because of his amorous relationship with my aunt. This hatred was strongest whenever he bought new saris or jewellery. He would always let my aunt choose what she wanted before giving the leftovers to my mother.
“I am okay. Your father will get mad if he hears you,” my mother assured me when I questioned her the first time this happened.
To this day, I do not understand my mother’s willingness to forgive both her husband and her sister.
My father had grown up as the eldest son of eleven — six brothers and five sisters — for whose welfare he became responsible. He was relatively young when his father gave his shop to him and built the second shop for himself in another town. My father stopped going to school and began working full-time. I don’t know if my father had ever had dreams of his own or how he felt about having to leave school; he never spoke to me about it. I suspect that, like many boys of his generation, he simply obeyed his father and put his own wishes to the side.
When I was a child, my father employed an accountant, Kidduswamy, and one of my father’s brothers-in-law, Santhiran, to run errands at the store and perform odd jobs. At the back of the store, my father built small quarters for about six workers, who lived there and made jewellery. Hanny, our chauffeur, drove my father to the shop most mornings, but sometimes he would ride his bike to work. Occasionally, Hanny also drove us to school in Jaffna, as well as to stores and on assorted errands.
In the mornings, I would help to open the store and get everything ready for my father. I would sweep the floors, tidy up, wash the main entrance, light the incense, and spray the ritual holy water throughout the store. Next, I’d walk to a local tuck shop to buy dosai, a type of pancake made from fermented batter, to feed to the crows, which was supposed to bring good luck to the store. Not long after that, my father would appear, and I would walk or bike home to get ready for school. Before my older brother, Lathy, went away to boarding school, this had been his job. I had the job for about two years before I also went off to boarding school, after which Kanna took over.
It was my father’s responsibility not only to pay dowries for his sisters when they were married but also to have houses built for them in our village. He also employed his brothers-in-law at the jewellery shop. He brought electricity to our village and helped to build Sri Meenakshi Amman Kovil, a temple in Sangkaththaanai. My father was a hero in our village, and no one had the courage to speak against him.
I can only wonder what this all meant for my mother. She had left her family when she married my father and came to live with him in his village, surrounded by his family. She never complained, but even if she had wanted to talk with someone, it would have been difficult. Whom could she trust? The only people she knew were her husband’s relatives, and they would never allow a bad word to be said against him.
In Tamil culture, once a woman marries, she leaves her parents and moves in with her husband for life. I’d never heard of a divorce or separation in my village.
One day, on my way home from school,
I noticed a crowd of people gathered around the well outside our home. They were yelling and screaming, and a rope was being lowered frantically into the well. I ran up to the well and peeked in. It was about fifty feet deep and very dark.
“What is happening?” I asked, but no one paid any attention to me. Suddenly, out of the darkness of the well, a figure emerged, illuminated by a beam of sunlight.
“Amma!” I screamed. My mother’s face, hollow and sad, stared up at me. She saw me crying.
“Amma,” I blubbered. “Please come up. I need you!” I was sobbing and screaming for her to come out of the well. Someone pulled me back and tried to comfort me, but I was hysterical.
When my mother was pulled from the well a few minutes later, I broke away, ran to her, and threw myself into her arms. I hugged her tightly and could not stop crying.
Not a word about the incident was ever spoken, and it was only many years later that I asked my mother about it. Even then, she was reluctant to discuss it in detail. She said only that she and my father had had an argument. At one point she threatened to jump into the well. He was so mad that he threw up his hands in defeat and said, “Fine! Jump in the well!” So she did.
Luckily, it was the dry season. The well water was deep enough to break her fall but not deep enough to drown her.
I am not sure my father had believed she would actually have the nerve to jump. Upset, he ran to the neighbours for help. In the panicked scene, I remember him only vaguely, hovering in the background, looking angry and embarrassed.
A few weeks later, my father added an extension to our home, which, besides creating a separate living space for my mother, included a separate bedroom for my aunt. What that really meant, however, was a room for him and my aunt. In a sense, he had two wives from that point. No one — family or friends — approved of the arrangement, and it was only because my father was such a powerful and respected man that it was tolerated.
This was before the outbreak of civil war in Sri Lanka, when my father was doing very well and business was booming.
As I said, my father was an attractive man, and young women flooded the jewellery shop. In fact, while he was with my mother and aunt, he had another affair with a young teacher. She would often visit the shop in the evening, and my father would send me away on errands while she was there. One day, the woman visited our home, and my aunt, jealous with rage, threw all our marble plates on the floor and broke the windows in the bedroom. As usual, my mother remained very quiet. After that, however, my father never brought the teacher home. Apparently, he ended up meeting her secretly at her home for a while.
Our family no longer ate together, even on Fridays. My mother and my aunt would cook separately in their own kitchens. When my father came home to eat, he would take his meal with my aunt.
A year later, my aunt gave birth to a baby girl: my half-sister, Kala. We all adored her. Eventually, Kala ended up spending more time with my mother than with her own, and my aunt resented the relationship. “I am your mother!” she would yell at Kala. “You call me Amma!” My aunt had a bad temper; in many ways she was hardly more than a child herself.
Whenever this happened, my brother Kanna, my mother, or I would intervene. Kala would call my brothers and me “Anna,” which means elder brother. Our love for Kala became stronger, and we grew up together as one family. I cannot begin to imagine how difficult and heartbreaking this situation was for my mother.
With time, I came to understand that it could not have been easy on my aunt either. I discovered later that my father began his affair with my aunt when he and my mother had visited my mother’s family. He had been writing intimate letters to her at school when she was only sixteen.
My aunt was probably flattered by my father’s attentions. After all, he was a great and respected man! If he was initiating this, then it must be okay. I think she was attracted to my father for other reasons, too; he was charming and dashing and could buy her nice things. But she was not my father’s wife. And when she took up with my father, it destroyed her own father, my grandfather, and she was no longer welcome at his house. She lost her family. And she had no real standing with my father’s people. It must have been uncomfortable for her, being in the same house with my mother, knowing she was resented and had nowhere else to go.
My aunt rarely left the house on her own. I think she was afraid of what people would say. When she went out, it was always with my father. At home she mostly kept to herself. Sometimes I would hear her and my mother arguing. It was my mother’s house, after all.
I resented how much attention my father lavished on my aunt and would find as many opportunities as I could to fight with her. I used to carry a small knife with me and I cut up her clothes, sofa, favourite chairs — anything that I could find to vent my anger on. I was caught a couple of times and my father beat me. My mother scolded me, too, but I am not so sure her heart was in it.
“Amma,” I asked her once, “I don’t know how you live like this. Why don’t you go and live with Grandpa and Grandma?”
“If I leave your father, no one will take care of you and your brothers and sisters. Grandpa and Grandma will be mad at me if I go back.”
“But —”
She stopped me cold. “I am living for my children now. I still love your father.”
I never discussed this with her again.
My aunt eventually had three daughters with my father: Kala, Sumathi, and Sharmilee. My mother gave birth to two more daughters of her own, Jance and Vani. In time, I stopped questioning our arrangement. Life moved on. What good would asking questions do? Nothing would change.
CHAPTER 6
Though destitute of virtue, or seeking pleasure (elsewhere), or devoid of good qualities, (yet) a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife.
— The Manusmriti
Not long after the official start of the Sri Lankan civil war, a smaller but hardly less violent civil war had broken out in our home. My uncles and aunts, who lived next door, became convinced that a curse had been placed on my father.
According to my mother, my father had a dream in which the goddess Sri Meenakshi Amman appeared to him, telling him that a woman would visit him to help him with “his problems.”
My father’s business was failing at the time, and I assume this was the problem that most concerned him. However, his taking as his mistress the younger sister of my mother was taboo in Hindu culture, and my mother’s family was incensed. But he was still a powerful and influential man, so what could be done? This unorthodox arrangement did not seem to be a problem in my father’s mind; he had been extremely generous with his wife’s family, and for that reason, I think he believed he was allowed this indiscretion.
At this point, my mother, father, and aunt had been feuding continually for months. My father had begun drinking heavily as well, and he often came home stumbling drunk and angry. Sometimes he would fight with my mother, sometimes with my aunt, sometimes with both. He would smash furniture, and my uncles and aunts from next door would show up and attempt to calm him down. “You have lost your senses!” they would say. “You are possessed by pey [a demon]. This is not you!”
The evening after his dream, an old woman appeared unannounced at our door. She was what is known in Tamil as a pey turattuvar, a demon chaser. My father strongly believed that this woman was the one prophesied by the goddess in his dream. She came from another village and she performed Hindu rituals in the way of an itinerant preacher. She was a pure Hindu who ate neither meat nor fish and had dedicated herself entirely to devotion to God.
She was invited in and brought to the prayer room in our house. There, she laid out neem leaves (a type of leaf to chase away evil spirits), banana leaves, rice, coconut, limes, holy water, and other odds and ends. She arranged the items on the banana leaves in front of a picture of Kali. Kali is the Hindu goddess of death, time, and doomsday, and is often associated with sexuality and violence, but she is also considered a strong
mother figure and is symbolic of motherly love.
My father, mother, Kanna, Lathy, and I were sitting around her as she started the prayer. All the lights were off except for a small kerosene lamp on the floor. Within minutes she became extremely agitated and began talking to herself in incomprehensible words. She swayed her head back and forth, and her body buckled and writhed and rocked from side to side. She was holding my father’s hand and repeatedly beating him with the neem leaves. The woman’s eyes suddenly rolled up — she stared at us with eyes like shiny white porcelain — and she moaned as if in terrible agony.
All of a sudden, she grabbed one of the limes covered with yellow and red paste, called santhanam and kungumam, respectively. The santhanam is from the sandalwood tree, used in the form of paste in temples. The kungumam is a powder used for social and religious markings, made from turmeric powder and lime. All at once, she sprang to her feet and bounded outside into the front yard. It was very dark out, and my father ran after her carrying the kerosene lamp. Mother, Kanna, Lathy, and I followed. I was terrified. The woman crept along the sand like a spectre, a shadow among shadows, tiptoeing and twitching her arms and legs oddly like a zombie. All of a sudden, she flung the lime into the darkness. Then she froze and lifted her hands, palms out, as if caressing the darkness. She pointed to where the lime had come to rest.
“Dig!” she commanded.
The Sadness of Geography Page 3