The Toss of a Lemon (39 page)

The old women hang back—they will not put themselves forward now even though they all feel they have kai raasi. Sivakami has only delivered seven babies, while they have delivered hundreds, but it’s true that Thangam’s babies all lived—thrived, in fact, despite their sickly mother and the uncertainty and strangeness of their vagrant early lives. Sivakami must once more perform her magic.

Any magician will tell you, though, that magic is nine-tenths labour and one-tenth luck. After nine hours of labour, Sivakami is praying for an hour of luck. She instructs Visalam to dribble some boiled rice water between Saradha’s dry lips. Saradha has permitted the old women to sop the sweat from her thick eyebrows, but only Sivakami is allowed to massage the spasming abdomen with sesame oil. Saradha’s forearms, as she bears down, squatting, are locked in Sivakami’s, and she will be persuaded to release them only because Sivakami needs her hands to catch the baby, whose head has finally, fuzzily, shown. The lucky hour has arrived.

A girl! She’s small but screams at a pitch that would be admirable in a child twice her size. Saradha, relieved, whispers, “Kai raasi, Amma. You should never deviate from tradition. You have always birthed the babies in this house.”

All the old women say as much and more to their families when escorted home that night. “Will she do the same for her son and daughter-in-law, do you think?” they whisper. “When?”

Sivakami is thinking the same thing. Vani has begun to do a daily puja for a dark-barked tree a furlong northwest of the house, on one of whose branches she has tied a pink ribbon, circling the tree nine times each morning. She has poured milk down every snake hole in the vicinity—Muchami would inform her whenever he spied one and she would journey out with one of Thangam’s children carrying the milk jug. (Presumably, if the snake didn’t drown in her generosity, it would be so grateful as to wish a child on her.) She has pledged a pair of little golden feet for the altar of the Krishna temple—Krishna is often worshipped in the form of a baby, chubby, sunny, mischievous—on condition of her pregnancy and safe delivery of a child.

Vairum never demonstrates blame toward his wife. Does he blame himself? He is a math genius and this is the simplest of equations: one plus one equals three.

And, daily, he is taunted by the evidence of his sister and brother-in-law’s proficiency in this regard. His actions, in the main, have been gracious toward his nieces and nephew. He is not by any means affectionate with them, but it is clear he will do whatever he can to ensure their current and future material well-being. For instance, tutoring Laddu. He says he is doing this for Thangam: he said he would never take from her but only give, and if he doesn’t offer this instruction, this boy will forever be a burden on his mother, causing Vairum indirectly to rob her. Having said that, the instruction does little to lessen this probability. Laddu attends his uncle’s tutorials out of fear, opening his school books and staring at them in bewilderment as Vairum prods and ridicules him for an hour and a half.

Laddu’s attitude toward his thrice-weekly Sanskrit tutorials is different. The first day his school chums attend, he does too, clearly intending that the time be spent in ribbing and chortling. This turns out to be more difficult than it is in school, where they have the cover of serious students, and because Laddu’s companions refuse to misbehave in the home of the most respected widow on their street.

Laddu does not appear for the next session and Sivakami sends Muchami out to track him down. He finds the boy lying within a rough circle of smooth, large stones, the remains of a Jain monastery abandoned eight hundred years earlier but still outlined in stone dots and dashes like a telegraph from history. For generations, this has been one of those places where boys go to smoke and brag, boys with and boys without promising futures. Muchami knows the place well; he was never interested in smoking or bragging, but he was interested in boys and so was a regular.

“What is this?” Muchami begins haranguing Laddu from five yards away, and the boy jumps up guiltily. “How is it possible that there are four boys learning Sanskrit in your uncle’s house and you are not one of them? Are those boys smarter than you, that they can find your house and you got lost in the forest? Maybe we should send you to school with a string tied around your waist and pull you home like a flapping fish when classes are over, shouldn’t we? Can’t you feel how your grandmother is suffering? She has brought all the knowledge of the village into your home and your portion is going to waste. She would give you everything, but she cannot afford to waste, not food, not clothes, not knowledge. It will rot there and smell bad and be thrown to the dogs in the street who will eat it and be fat and then maybe get sick, too! See how you are hurting your grandmother and all the creatures of the world by not following your dharma? Move! Back to the house! Look smart!”

Laddu doesn’t look smart at all but does move fast. The tutorial has already begun, young Kesavan reciting noun inflections in a mesmerizing singsong, and his glazed-looking students singing each phrase back at him, “Ramaha Ramow Ramaaha, Ramam Ramow Ramaaha ...” Laddu starts singing along while still in the courtyard and bursts over the threshold, expecting to garner a laugh on his entrance. No one even looks at him, and he creeps to a place on the floor, farthest from the tutor.

So now there are four boys learning Sanskrit. Or ... ?

Sivakami, peeping in to check on the group’s progress, notices Muchami, sitting in one of the doorways to the garden, agape at the proceedings. No sounds issue from him, but his lips are moving and he is hanging on each syllable as though it contains the mysteries of birth, death and cinema. Seeing him sit so wholly absorbed in the vicarious act of learning, Sivakami recalls one of her earliest impressions of him, that he aspires to be something more than most of his class. She recalls her own hope that she might assist him in realizing this aspiration. She already has—he is, at forty-two, among the most highly respected members of his caste. But here is a skill none of them has, something even she does not possess and never will, because she hasn’t time nor would she consider it decorous. But now that Vairum has taken over much of the management of the property, and Sita has entered school, Muchami has more free time, and why shouldn’t he consider some self-improvement?

The next day, Sivakami tells him to make a new slate and purchase some more chalk.

“Ayoh,” he sighs. “Has Laddu lost or broken yet another slate? Honestly, I...”

“No, Muchami, it’s for you,” Sivakami says proudly, glancing at Mari, who is washing the vessels following the mid-morning meal, squatting in the courtyard and scrubbing the pots with soap-nut powder and a puff of coconut coir, splashing them with water from the well.

“What will I do with it?” he asks, understandably confused. Mari, having overheard Sivakami conferring with young Kesavan, starts to grin.

“As long as you are chasing Laddu and making him attend the Sanskrit tutorial, you may as well attend it yourself,” Sivakami replies with mock gruffness. “I’m adding it to your responsibilities.”

Muchami feels his mouth shape into a silent “o,” much in the way he has tried, silently, to mouth the syllables of Sanskrit. He feels dismayed, as can happen when we receive something for which we did not dare hope. He is not a person who has spent time in self-definition. He is too busy, his personality too strong. It would have been a waste of his time. Now, though he would never describe it thus, his self-image is undergoing a jolt.

He is a member of what was once a warrior caste. His ancestors may have defended kings in a time before memory, which in their community is limited to a lifetime. Now their lot is with agriculture and service. They are a proud caste and, when serving, they serve fiercely. There are members of the generation after Muchami’s who attend school—those young relatives of his who were Vairum’s schoolyard defenders, for instance. One or two of his own generation may have done so, never for more than a few years. He didn’t attend. It didn’t matter.

He has altered as a result of his life in Sivakami’s household, from the time he subtly adopted Hanumarathnam’s Brahminical gait and manner. He has been further changed by his marriage to a woman who succeeds in observing Brahmin custom and prejudice more rigorously than most Brahmins—elevated, in Muchami and Mari’s opinion; estranged, in that of their families.

And now he is to sit with the children of the scholarly caste and repeat with them the sacred phrases of the ancient language, the language of the distinguished, the learned. Was it even permissible?

“Young Kesavan thought it a terrific idea,” Sivakami reassures him.

Is Muchami trembling?

Kesavan would think it a terrific idea: he is a progressive and positively delights in the idea of teaching Sanskrit to a servant in a Brahmin household. What hasn’t occurred to him, or to Sivakami, is that were Muchami to learn to read and write Tamil, he would be well qualified for some other job. He would have choice and mobility. Sanskrit, on the other hand, qualifies him for nothing.

Filled with a cautious, unfamiliar joy, Muchami finds a scrap of board, paints it black, leans it on the back of his hut, checks to make sure it’s drying smooth and gives it another coat the next day.

“Cha, chha, ja, jha, gna.”

“Cha, cha, cha, cha, gna.”

Laddu and his buddies suppress giggles as Kesavan turns to the garden door to address his newest student.

“Muchami. Try again. Cha, chha, ja, jha, gna.”

“Cha, cha, cha...”

“No, Muchami, listen.
Chha.”
Kesavan’s voice betrays impatience. His other students are not nearly so interested, but they can, at least, pronounce the syllables of this language they are purporting to learn.

Muchami’s brow is knit. “Cha,” he chokes out hesitantly.

“Oh, never mind.”

They move on to the next group of phonemes.

Muchami leaves his first class as dejected as he has ever been. He can hear that these syllables are distinct. But how to make them? He has no idea. How could it be as hard as this if children are doing it every day? Muchami speaks a different Tamil from the Brahmins’—one without Sanskrit inflections and terms. His tongue has not been accustomed to forming these sounds, which the sniggering boys have been instructed to use from birth, for words as common as “cooked rice” and “banana,” items for which he has either another word entirely or another pronunciation.

His inability puzzles him—he is, as he well knows, among the most perceptive men in the village, no caste barred. He is a magnet for information and he knows how to use it. These sounds, though, and the words formed from them, they seem to have no place to roost in his head. They fly at him like frantic pigeons. They make him panic. He tries to retain them but feels them flutter off.

Each of those first few days, Sivakami eagerly inquires what it’s like, to take a class. She expects his usual entertaining accounts, full of mimicry and insight. But all he says is, “It’s good! Good! The teacher is very good, smart boy. Could I have more sambar?”

How to say he has never learned a thing in a classroom and can’t figure out how to do so?

Mari does not ask him questions about his lessons. She flashes through her daily chores with defensive pride, and when Gayatri jokes that now it is not only Mari who is more Brahmin than the Brahmins, but her husband as well, Mari’s pride shrills fiercer still, daring anyone to prevent this.

As THE FIFTH YEAR OF VANI’S RESIDENCE in their home drizzles to a close, Sivakami feels pressure to perform some greater supplication on her son’s behalf than the pujas she has done daily for the Ramar. She resolves on commissioning a dramatization of the Ramayana, the story of Rama’s life and deeds. Vairum finds out for her which troupe in the region has the best reputation for flair and piety and writes a letter of request on her behalf. The troupe writes back; the dates and price are confirmed; she places their response at the feet of the four stone figures who govern her home and begs them again, be pleased with her and this re-enactment of their trials and victories. Send me
a
grandchild, one who will belong to this house
and
to you. The house drums around her with the noises of all those grandchildren who don’t belong, welcome as they are.

Now, two days before Sivakami’s dedicated Ramayana dramatization is to commence, Muchami brings unwelcome intelligence: another Ramayana will be performed in the village at the same time as hers, a different version.

Sivakami straightens from bending over a vat of oil, where eight vadais bounce and bubble. “Another Ramayana?” she repeats after him. “There are two Ramayanas: one written by Valmiki and one by Kamban, one Sanskrit and one Tamil, but they are one and the same. There is no... what did you call this?”

“It’s called the Self-Respect Movement, Amma. They call this the ‘Self-Respect Ramayana,’” Muchami reiterates shamefacedly. “I have heard it’s a version where Ravana is, well... ahem, the hero.”