Thangam leans in the doorway and smiles at them, a smile below which stretch two cords in her neck, like the pillars of a suspension bridge. She is as grey as ash, and as incorporeal.
Muchami says, “Thangam? Are you well?” But Thangam just stands back silently to let Janaki enter the small dwelling. Janaki moves toward her mother to kiss her, but Thangam makes no similar move and her initiative fades. She puts her bag in a corner while Thangam makes coffee for Muchami, who squats at the front stoop.
They are living in a house with the well in the middle of the main hall, under an open skylight. Raghavan runs around the well, flings himself gaily against the walls, pulls saris and braids. Once he stops and walks delicately to a shrouded pile. He pats it gently, saying, “Amma. Ga’phone. Amma! Ga’phone.” She smiles, goes to the mound and unveils the gramophone.
Raghavan sits and watches the turntable with the intensity of the little dog on the label waiting for his master’s voice, while Thangam takes four records, one by one, from a high shelf. She fits the needle into the gramophone’s arm and the key into the body and winds. Janaki and the neighbour sit, while Muchami moves into the front doorway. First they hear a loud scratchiness, then a single veena as though heard over a river’s rush. It’s “Sami Varnam,” the same recording they heard when Goli first gave Thangam the machine.
Thangam plucks the disc from its bed, sheathes it and takes out another. The new record also rushes and shushes, riverine—but it is a vocalist this time, not a veena player. The singer is very young. Janaki has never heard Bharati sing, but she finds herself imagining her friend at home, in that pretty hut with no neighbours, plaiting her hair after her oil bath, kohling her eyes dreamily in a fragment of mirror, singing through barely parted lips.
They all know the song: “Balagopala Palaya Mam,” a devotional song for Lord Krishna, composed by Dikshitr, one of the immortals of south Indian classical music. Janaki sings along, and even the severe-looking neighbour joins in. Thangam leans against a pillar with her eyes closed. Little Raghavan claps his chubby hands and occasionally cuffs one of them in delight.
But Thangam forgot to rewind the machine, and when the song is nearly at its end, the disc begins to slow. Seventy-eight rpm becomes sixty-five, fifty, thirty-five. Raghavan stops mid-clap to listen to this dying groan. Janaki giggles at the funny sound, at the expression on the little boy’s face. Seeing her laugh, he begins laughing also.
Thangam opens her eyes, pulls out a third disc and slips it on the turntable, not forgetting to crank this time. She looks at her children and visitor with a sly expression, one that might almost be mischief. Janaki stops laughing in amazement, but many people are still laughing, more than are present: from the phonograph issues a river of giggling, chortling, guffawing and twittering, the laughter of a large number of people of all ages and sexes that, in ensemble, creates the cadences of a familiar, elementary tune, “Vara Veena.”
It is a novelty record, a fashion item: music of laughter. Minister probably has a copy; he rarely misses a fad.
Raghavan doubles over, laughing louder and harder. At this, at him, Janaki starts laughing again; the neighbour joins in, and even Muchami, at the door. Thangam smiles, her eyes closed again, looking almost peaceful.
Oh, thinks Janaki, as she lies that night with her baby brother sleeping in her arms and the first monsoon rains thrumming through the skylight, why could not every day of our lives have been like this?
Janaki sets to work the next day, getting them ready to move. Muchami, seeing that there are no servants here, is arranging to transport their belongings to the new home, while Janaki, Thangam and the baby will take the train.
Not much has been packed yet but there is not much to pack. Still, progress is very slow at first because each item Janaki puts in a bag or trunk, her little brother takes out again. So instead she sets the things down beside the luggage and tells him to leave them there. He mischievously packs them one by one. In this way, things get done.
Janaki is shocked at how few furnishings there are and asks if some items have not gone ahead with her father. Thangam shakes her head. Janaki shrugs and continues to make arrangements, knowing her mother must have had more copper pots than this—there are gaps in the usual size sequence. She’s sure they had more in the Karnatak country. And only one silver plate—unheard of. She admits to herself what is clear: her father must have pawned the pots and plates over the years.
The transfer of goods and persons to the village of Munnur is completed without incident. Munnur is to the east, a few hours closer to Cholapatti, back on the Kaveri. Muchami, after delivering them, takes his leave. When Janaki sees him off on the veranda of their new home, even more modest than the last, he inclines toward her and speaks in a low voice. “Janaki, your grandmother gave you a little money, yes?” Janaki confirms it.
“Keep that safe,” he instructs, sounding reassuring, no longer the servant, but Sivakami’s representative. “It’s for an emergency. You never know what might happen. And you know how to contact us, if you need to? To send a letter?”
“Yes, of course,” Janaki says—she’s fourteen, practically an adult!—but also scared at the degree of responsibility this conference implies.
“All right,” Muchami says, his brow furrowed. He’s reluctant to leave.
“It’s okay, Muchami.” Janaki looks brave. “We’ll be fine.”
He looks at the ground. “You’re a good girl, Janaki, a strong girl, smart girl. I know you will take good care of little Thangam. Poor Thangam.”
Janaki is slightly offended that Muchami sees her mother—and probably her father—just as she does. But she cannot sustain this feeling ; she is still too much the little girl she was.
“Don’t worry, Muchami,” she insists. “I will look after her.”
He smiles slightly, bows and is gone.
Goli had appeared surprised to see his family, but he seems to be in a mood of regularity, going to the office every day and, better yet, coming home. He hasn’t made friends yet, Janaki thinks sourly. She looks at her mother and thinks of all she has suffered, feeling self-righteous and wishing she didn’t.
Janaki unpacks by leaving the bags and trunks open and letting Raghavan keep himself busy. She hangs the cuckoo clock—another of Goli’s caprices—and a calendar she brought from Cholapatti, showing an image of the goddess Saraswati, signified by her veena. A servant is arranged for cleaning; Thangam will cook. The rains are coming reliably now and the family, too, settles into a routine of sorts.
Navaratri is fast approaching and Janaki turns her thoughts happily, if uncertainly, to the festival: they are in a house entirely without dolls and with barely five or six deity portraits. Buying dolls the way Gayatri would is not an option: Janaki doesn’t want to ask her parents to pay and doesn’t think this qualifies as an emergency, so she can’t use the money her grandmother gave her.
As she sits on the veranda one morning, watching the rain and thinking on the doll question, Raghavan runs out to give her a murrukku, then trips and drops his own in a puddle. He howls briefly, then continues dunking the chickpea flour snack into the puddle until it is reduced to a sodden mess.
Janaki recalls making her family’s names in murrukku and smiles as an idea occurs to her. She fills a bowl with wheat flour, which they have in abundance and don’t much need. She mixes in some rice flour and blends it with water to make a dough. As she works beside the well, the rain clears up, and a timid sunshine leaks through the clouds.
From the paste, Janaki begins fashioning figures the height of her hand: a yogi, a teacher, a judge, laundryman, betel vendor, widow, farmer, iron-press man, priest, barber, soldier, rail signal man, mother, father, goddesses Meenakshi, Saraswati and Lalitha Parameshwari, a Sita, with Rama, Lakshmana and Hanuman, a Ganesha. As the homunculi dry, she paints details onto them with kohl, crushed leaves, tamarind, turmeric, lime and ink. She anoints them, where appropriate, with holy ash, sandal and vermilion, using a lightly frayed green neem stick as a brush.
Over a few days, a small village grows in their small hall, where Janaki has created a golu stand of seven shelves, made of bricks and boards left by some previous tenant. On the floor, she places pigs, crows, puppies, a policeman, a village idiot, a labourer, a vegetable vendor, a bulk goods vendor, a Muslim shopkeeper and four musicians. Two village women argue, two pound rice grains; two men nap in the street, and two fight over a goat. A baby gets a massage; a little girl plays hide-and-seek; a couple get married. Set in a little garden of her own, one naughty little girl eats some dirt. A calf and a young Lord Krishna watch over her in attitudes of adoration.
Raghavan plays with them all. Though he’s told to play gently, he breaks or loses a number of the figures. Janaki refashions them, not ungrateful for the extra demands on her time. The few neighbours who come nightly during the festival never fail to remark on the ingenious little village. The goddesses must certainly be pleased with Janaki, they tell her. Even more important for Janaki, Thangam is delighted. Janaki basks in her mother’s pleasure as the small figures’ industry, prosperity and cheer light the empty house.
The only gloom on their society of simple pleasures is cast by Goli. He goes out to work in the morning and returns in the evenings, giving them daytimes of freedom and evenings of trying to keep the baby quiet and out of his way. Goli does not remark on the doughy village within his residence, and Janaki thinks this is just as well. Thangam spends evenings sitting mute and inert in a corner. When neighbours come to pay visits, customary during this festival, Thangam greets them silently, while Janaki, trying to keep up appearances, offers refreshments on arrival, and a plate of turmeric, betel and vermilion as the ladies depart.
On the fifth day of the festival, a letter arrives from Sivakami. Janaki’s hands shake as she steams it open, her eyes welling. It has not been easy, staying with her parents. Janaki loves Thangam in intense and complicated ways, but she loves Sivakami with a love light and clear.
The letter says Vani is playing in a special Navaratri concert series on All India Radio, to be broadcast from Madras. Vani has, since they moved, played a few concerts in Madras. She will play on the radio on the sixth night of the festival—tomorrow. Janaki’s heart pounds and her mouth waters at the prospect of hearing her aunt. Sivakami says in the letter they must listen to the concert. Of course they must. Janaki will die if they don’t.
When her father returns from work, Janaki hands him the letter and watches his face. She finds herself comparing him with his wedding portrait, on the wall behind him. He has the same wavy jet hair and sharp button eyes, but looks less restless now, more intent, and lines have formed on his wide, square muzzle, like big apostrophes around everything that comes out of his mouth.
He snorts, bringing her to attention.
“Yes,” he says, “we must, we must hear your talented aunty.”
He has said what Janaki wanted to hear, even if the quote marks around it give it some irony she doesn’t understand. She scurries to prepare.
The first complication is that Munnur, where they are now stationed, is not electrified. Goli volunteers that his good friends in Konam, the closest town, own a radio and would be pleased to have them come and visit. The second complication is that the concert will run later than the last bus back to Munnur. They will stay overnight and catch the first bus at 3:30 a.m. The third is that some rule of Goli’s position forbids him to overnight anywhere outside of Munnur. Goli scoffs when Janaki timorously mentions this. Janaki, well trained in strategic deceit, emphasizes to those neighbours who visit that they will return by the last bus at night. No one from the village is ever out at night, anyhow. They hope that in the morning they will be able to sneak in without the more zealous housewives and busybodies seeing them.
Janaki is bustling happily and pauses to ask Thangam if they should bring a second extra set of clothes for Raghavan and whether Thangam needs a shawl for the early-morning trip back. Thangam doesn’t reply but rather looks on listlessly until Janaki stops, pursing her lips, and asks, “Akka?”
Thangam’s eyes slide away beneath papery blue eyelids. She draws in a quick breath and says, “You must go and enjoy. Vani plays beautiful music.”
“Akka, why, Akka?” Janaki is plaintive. “Why won’t you come?”
“You are a good girl.” Thangam reaches out. Her hands, which long ago were warm and golden-hued, are cold and blue-veined, white at the tips. She reaches out to lay her hands on Janaki’s head and then cracks her knuckles against her own temples.
“Chamutthu,”
she says, to accompany this touching, absurd gesture, the older person abasing herself before the perfection of the younger. “Good girl.”
The gesture is commonplace—but not from Thangam. Janaki doesn’t recall having ever received a sign of affection from her mother. She has wanted such a touch so badly, for so long, that her head burns where her mother’s fingers stroked her. She feels small and close to tears.
In silence, Janaki prepares to go. Her mother plaits her hair tight and shiny, tying in the ribbons with gentle hands like dreams of alchemy and magic. In contrast, Sivakami’s hands, the few times she has done Janaki’s hair, felt rough, practical, reassuring.
Freshly pressed and dressed, in a half-sari made up of a snuff-brown silk paavaadai with cream-coloured davani, Janaki climbs into the bus behind her father. He had asked nothing when Thangam failed to accompany them out the door. But had he even noticed Janaki was there? The instant he drops into his seat, he falls asleep. Janaki, sitting in the aisle seat, watches him, his handsome head leaning against the algae-green rexine of the seat back. In sleep, she thinks,
he looks smaller and less dangerous than he does alive.
Oops—
awake, I mean. Why is he like he is? Why can’t he just be nice?