Of course Uncle Seetharamu was there, and my cousins Seetha, Parvathi, Papa, Lakshmidevi, Nanja, Sita, Cauvery, Anandi, Ventalakshmi, Bhagirathi, and Savithri. (This Savithri was a lean and haggard thing, having borne four children in succession, year after year; her belly was round and her breasts indeterminate.) Father’s cousins Ramachandra and Lakshminarayna were there too, gay with laughter, and spontaneous pun. Sanskrit, Kannada, Urdu, Telugu, English, were full of contradictory significances, so a word in this language meant something to me and something quite different to you, and so you laughed. Smutty stories, too, there must have been and many, as the coolies were laying the palm leaves on the roof, and the string was being tied to hold the pillar decorations. Green cloth, with white lilies covered the bamboos, and someone, in patriotism, hung a huge, crude picture of Mahatma Gandhi, paper garland and all, to show our devotion to the Father of the Nation. Nobody had the courage to remove the picture, so we were protected from every form of criticism. Ladies now came in and out of the place, with more and more silk on them, and their gaiety and their fussations were always amusing. The men were good for nothing in these affairs. They would go straight to the kitchen and talk to Little Mother, whether she was praying or feeding, or shut up in the bathroom having a bath, or away in the garden and in some unmentionable place. Fortunately Little Mother had her ‘month’ this time quite early, and as she could not go into the kitchen, she was available to anybody at any time, so the work went on the quicker.
People began to arrive by train. My cousins, Raghu, or Chandu (he who worked in All-India Radio) went to receive them, and the visitors were put up with Sanjivayya or Finance- Officer Sankarnarayan Iyer. Now that the examinations were over, it was a splendid time for the young. Saroja’s joy was golden you would have thought, if you had not known her. But she used to sit by me, as I lay in my room, and I spoke to her of Madeleine and myself, or of Georges and his forthcoming marriage with Catherine, for I talked a great deal. She wished she had been a European woman; it would have given her so much freedom, so much brightness.
‘What freedom?’ I exclaimed. ‘The freedom of foolishness. In what way, Saroja, do you think Catherine or Madeleine is better off than you?’
‘They know how to love.’
‘And you?’
‘And we know how to bear children. We are just like a motorcar or a bank account. Or, better still, we are like a comfortable salary paid by a benign and eternal British Government. Our joy is a treasury receipt.’
‘Oh, it’ll be all right, Saroja. Time and experience soften all things.’
‘But a mother-in-law is a mother-in-law, and she can bring tears to your eyes. And the sisters-in-law, and the brothers-in- law…’
‘Times have changed, Saroja.’
‘Not in India yet — and certainly not among Brahmins. You had better wait till you see my in-laws. They already think I’m a cloth in their wash-basket: they’ll know when to beat me against the stone, to make me white as milk. We girls are thrown to other families as the most intimate, the most private of our clothes are thrown to the dhobi on Saturday morning. Like cotton, we women must have grown on trees…’
There was no answer to give. But just then a jeweller butted in to take a wax impression of Saroja’s palm or finger or wrist, and some flower-seller asked whether she wanted jasmines in the morning and roses in the evening, on the second day.
‘Throw your flowers to the Musa river, and drink a warm cup of milk afterwards,’ Saroja spat back.
‘Don’t say inauspicious things,’ Little Mother admonished from the inner courtyard.
The lizards on the wall were merry. There were lots of flies, for there were piles of rice and jaggery, and bananas, besan for laddus, and pappadams lay drying all over the terrace. Our maid Muthakka’s child, a boy of five, sat noiselessly somewhere saying ‘Hoy-Hoy’ against the crows and the flies. And when the flies went back to their walls to feed on their discoveries, the lizards slowly, without effort, discovered them. Everybody must have their share of marriage.
The guavas became red on the trees — and never was the jasmine so profuse with flowers. ‘A marriage at home,’ quoted Little Mother, ‘maketh well-water rise to lip of earth.’
‘Between a funeral and a marriage,’ said Saroja, ‘there isn’t much to choose. In both you have Brahmins with mantras— whether it is in Benares or here, it makes no difference — and in both you have the pandal first, and then music in front, flowers, bright shawls, fire. The only difference is that in one you are two, and in the other you are alone…’ Saroja was thinking of Father. ‘There, you see,’ she went on, ‘they’re bringing the mango leaves, and they’ll erect the pandal now…’ Little Mother listened to all this and said nothing. She looked towards me for help.
‘God knows,’ she said, when Saroja had gone somewhere, fooling about in her restlessness, ‘God knows, Rama, he’s such a nice person, is Subramanya. Not because he’s my own cousin’s son do I praise him; not because he’s audit officer with the Government of India do I praise him; but he’s so deferential, so clean. True, he’s not refined like you people are, but then all sorts must live in the world to make it a world. If your grandfather had looked at me and my great learning, would he have chosen me for your father, even for a third marriage? A woman has to marry, whether she be blind, deaf, mute, or tuberculous. Her womb is her life, and we cannot choose our men. True, in your part of the globe, in Europe, they say they choose their own husbands, and I’ve seen all this in the cinemas. But we are not Europeans. We are of this country — we are Brahmins. Well, yours was a destiny, strange, magnificent; you were always a favourite of the gods. How like a prince, a god, you looked as you came and stood in the sanctuary, Rama. You are not of this, our earth.’
‘From where am I then, Little Mother?’ I laughed.
‘Well, I do not know. You are made differently. There you are, a boy bright as you, going to Europe, winning big university degrees — and you do not drink, eat meat, or smoke; nor take on those vulgar ways Belur Krishnappa’s third son or Modi Venktaramayyas’s son-in-law had when they came back — with ugly pipes in their mouths and talking to their mothers as if they were charwomen of the household. And they would soon have to eat at tables and wear European clothes even at home. It must have been your mother, that holy lady,’ she said,
pointing to my mother’s big picture on the wall, ‘that made you thus.’ There was a desperate little silence, and then Little Mother continued: ‘This time, Rama, you won’t abandon us, will you? Even the fire knows you are here — from the day you came it has purred and purred… A man at home is like a god in the temple.’ To Little Mother a proverb always meant an incontrovertible truth. ‘You will like Subramanya,’ she added after a moment. ‘He’s just the man to keep under yoke a betwixt-left-and-right girl like Saroja…’