The Toss of a Lemon (79 page)

“People like us?”

“Modest people. Conservative people. We who live a quiet, middle-class village life, and keep to ourselves.”

Janaki nods—that’s it, that’s who she is. That’s the only life she has ever wanted.

IT IS THE LAST WEEK OF JUNE 1945, and Janaki ‘swaterbreaks. As she goes into the birthing room, she signals to Muchami. When he nears, she hisses, “Amma’s kai raasi. I won’t let anyone else touch me.”

Sivakami’s kai raasi are the first hands on Janaki’s baby, and Janaki’s own hands are next. The nurse is never called.

It’s a girl, a strong one. She thrashes and yells and eats heartily. Even at birth, she looks like her father, with a strong nose and round cheeks. Janaki writes to Baskaran to bring a photo of himself when he comes for the eleventh-day ceremony, so that when the ayah comes to massage the child and mould her features, she can make the baby’s nose even more like his.

He doesn’t think this is funny. He shows up two days early and, in a temper, tells Janaki from outside the birthing room that she will never again come to Cholapatti for a birth.

Janaki says nothing, but thinks,
He’s a fool, criticizing, when the
birth could not have gone better.

He has brought gifts for the baby and coldly thanks Sivakami for doing such a good job—he is all manners—but Sivakami is mortified and Janaki is most hurt by the pain she has caused her grandmother, who feels terrible at having unwittingly created discord between the young couple. Although Janaki insists that it is her fault, not Sivakami!’s, Sivakami mounts her own argument.

“I raised you, Janaki. If you can disobey your husband, I did a bad job. It’s my fault.”

“Did you never disobey your husband, Sivakamikka?” Gayatri, witness to all this, asks.

Sivakami looks as if she’s trying to remember.

“No, never.” To answer otherwise would be to fault her own parents. “Don’t ever do such a thing again.”

Vairum and Vani are coming to Cholapatti for the baby’s naming ceremony—they didn’t come for all the babies!’, but Vairum has a special interest in Janaki’s family. Generally, this interest pleases Janaki, but now she is dreading their arrival. While she had been confident of her right to decide who birthed her baby, she fears Vairum’s reaction when he finds out she disobeyed her husband and failed to take advantage of modern methods. Vairum is so derisive about so many of their traditions, though not consistently: he and Vani still do a daily puja in their home and observe all the Hindu festivals. But this may be on Vani’s initiative. Vairum is vocal, even at family gatherings, about his disdain for the way most of Sivakami’s grandchildren live, in fulfillment of her legacy of orthodoxy.

She also feels a bit weak at the prospect of seeing Vani at the baby’s naming ceremony. The last time she saw them was in Pandiyoor, two months after Visalam’s passing, six months after Vani’s mother’s own death. Vani had looked drawn and greyish, a little worse each time Janaki saw her. She still played beautifully but otherwise appeared listless, not even chattering much at mealtimes, though she occasionally mumbled something Janaki couldn’t catch, something that might have been the fragment of a story. Janaki could only think of one explanation, Vani’s despair at her barrenness.

From within the birth room, she hears them arrive at the front, greeted by Murthy, Baskaran, Minister and Gayatri, Radhai, Krishnan and Raghavan. Kamalam is staying with her in the birth room to help her and peers out, squinting against the sunlight from the open front door. Vairum bounds into the main hall and does a full-length obeisance for the Ramar, leaps up and calls to Vani, “Come! Come!”

Vani enters more shyly and does the same, and then stands beside Vairum as he beckons the family and neighbours to enter and calls out to his mother. “Amma! Come here.”

Janaki and Kamalam are supposed to stay in the birth room, but they are too curious and know no one will notice if they peer around the door at Sivakami, who has inched up to the pantry door but refuses to come any farther in front of Murthy and Minister.

“Oh, Amma. You are going to have adjust your village ways if...” Vairum pauses dramatically and looks at everyone, “you are to come and visit us in Madras.”

He enjoys everyone’s bemusement for a moment: how will Sivakami get away, with all her responsibilities? Why would Vairum even think up such a scheme? The children wonder if they are going, too.

Janaki looks at Vani, who seems happy and peaceful: still thin, but untroubled. What is happening?

“It will be an extended stay, Amma, because we are very happy to tell you—” Vairum pauses again and breathes deeply—“that Vani is expecting.”

Sivakami is staggered. Forgetting herself, she takes a step forward and holds out her arms. Vairum and Vani step into her light and unfamiliar embrace.

IN THE MONTHS LEADING UP TO HER DEPARTURE for Madras, Sivakami replays for herself again and again the moment when Vairum told her he and Vani would be parents once more, as though it is a prayer bead on the string she tells daily.

After his oblation for the Ramar, he had turned to her with a speed and intensity she found alarming, his eyes burning. She recalls that alarm now with amusement, and also remembers the warmth and the good humour of his glance. It made her shiver.

“We are going to have need of your services,” he had said, after making the announcement. “You know I have no truck with superstition, but Vani has insisted that she will have no doctors and that your kai raasi must deliver our child. I don’t have the power to deny her anything she wants.” He threw his arms up happily, then continued in a softer, tenderer tone. “Since her mother died, there is no reason for her to go to Pandiyoor for childbirth and, in any case, she has always felt that you are as a mother to her.”

Janaki had listened to the exchange with wonder mixed with relief: if Vairum was acceding to Vani’s wish for Sivakami’s lucky hands, he couldn’t object to hers! And now she need not feel self-conscious at the blessing of her child: Vairum and Vani’s witness will be an especially happy one. What marvellous news!

She and Kamalam talk about it that night as Janaki nurses her daughter. Vairum and Vani so needed this. Janaki is sure that if Sivakami delivers the child, it will be strong and healthy, though she is still concerned for Vani, who looked so ill so recently, and is thrity-five, an advanced age for child-bearing.

They agree that Sivakami should come to Madras a few months before the birth, to cook and care for Vani the way a mother would.

Kamalam will return to Visalam’s in-laws’ house. They have been clamouring for her to come back, especially Visalam’s children, who have grown very attached. Saradha, who is well settled in Thiruchi, will look after the rest of her younger siblings there. She has a daughter a year older than Radhai, and Vairum had intended that Krishnan and Raghavan would soon go live in Thiruchi in any case, to attend English-medium schools there. Sita is pregnant and Vairum has invited her to come to Madras instead of Cholapatti for her delivery. Laddu still lives with his grandmother in Cholapatti and cannot leave: he has now been given responsibility for a rice mill. He will board at the chattram in Kulithalai, where he will have meals and company, as long as Sivakami is away.

Although there is little in her affairs that she needs to wrap up—Muchami will look after the tenants as usual and Vairum comes once a month or so—there is one matter she wants safeguarded. She entrusts a biscuit tin of completed beadwork pieces to Gayatri, those that are still requested, every month or two, by Brahmins along the quarter whose daughters are about to give birth. Sivakami still has never spoken of it to Vairum and has no reason to believe he knows.

She will take with her the scene she is at work on now: Krishna dancing on the five hoods of the monster cobra. This scene should be finished before Vani gives birth. Apart from that, she packs a satchel of snacks she has made as a gift for Vairum and Vani, and another, much smaller one, containing her spare sari, her copy of the Kamba-Ramanayanam, between whose pages she has stowed five ten-rupee notes, her beadwork and the small brass water jug she always drinks from, so as not to have to share a vessel.

MUCHAMI IS EXCITED FOR HER, but also concerned: Vairum is so unconventional. What if he forces Sivakami to do things that make her uncomfortable? She is not young any more, he thinks, as he weaves thatch to repair the cowshed roof. The least Vairum can do is permit her her ways.

He tears a piece of thatch by pulling it too hard and realizes he has been getting angry with Vairum before anything has even happened. He certainly did look happy, and Vani looked better than she has in years. Maybe their contentment and gratitude for Sivakami’s help will soften Vairum’s radical edge.

He wonders how he will fill his days while she is gone.

“It will be quiet around here,” he remarks to her late one morning.

His routine has altered considerably. He no longer has a child to look after, and Mari has been having health problems for the last year or two. She has been increasingly nervous and irritable, prone to dropping things and occasionally fainting. Sivakami has relieved her of many of her duties. Though he looks in during the day to make sure she’s all right, Muchami prefers to leave their hut to her.

“Maybe I should go in for some other work: start a business. Can you see me in import-export?”

Sivakami laughs over the vegetables she is cutting. “You could do anything you want. Yes, I suppose the house hasn’t been left empty since I went to live with my brothers—what’s that, forty years ago?”

“A lifetime.” Muchami walks to the garden door to spit a stream of betel juice into the growth.

“How did you stay busy back then?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says, trying to remember. “It was easier when one was young. There was always activity at the market, gossip, scandals, friends needing help.” He doesn’t mention midnight liaisons that occasionally left him fatigued during the day: an extra hour for siesta was a welcome thing. He still indulges, but only very occasionally. “The properties also needed more managing then, before Vairum organized them all. Life starts to run itself after a while.”

“You should rest up while I’m gone. Vairum may not want to come here so much when he has a child, and the first year, things may fall into some disarray. You will be useful then.”

“Yes, it could happen.” He smiles at her, feeling nervous. Is he only fearful of how Vairum might treat her there, so far away from her routines and the village she knows? No, there’s something else: “Amma, when you go, do a ritual over Vani against the evil eye.”

Sivakami stops slicing okra and looks at him.

“I am afraid,” he tells her, and it’s true. He is chilled to the bone at the prospect of what might happen if this pregnancy doesn’t succeed.

“You are right,” she says, allowing herself to feel the fear she had suppressed with her own happiness. “I will do it, yes.”

It’s 7 a.m. when Vairum comes to fetch her in his new car, a red Buick sedan. She has been ready and waiting for a couple of hours, sitting in the door to the pantry while Muchami keeps her company from the courtyard. Vairum stops at the house only long enough for a drink of water. He has to draw it at the well because the big clay water pot in the pantry is drained and turned upside down.

“Ready, Amma?”

The house already has an empty feel, the shutters closed, the children gone. Sivakami begins locking all the doors in the house, from back to front, and Muchami goes through the garden to stand on the street beside the car to await his final instructions. Alone, Sivakami does a final oblation for the Ramar, thinking of the two other times she has performed a farewell for these gods: before going to her brothers’ house and before going to Munnoor when Thangam died. She prays, innocent and hearty, that all should go well in Madras, stifling a moth-wing flutter of worry. Muchami was quite right to remind her to do a ritual against dhrishti.