“It is the expression of our youth.” Muthu Reddiar sweeps the space before him good-humouredly. “They are impatient. Don’t take it so seriously.”
Vairum had chatted with Minister on arriving, before the others had come. This “Self-Respect” Ramayana seems to Minister to be the harbinger of a fate that has already begun to strike. The years have not been great for him, politically, and he is serving as Taluk Board president-again. He had stood for election last year at the urging of his numerous friends. While it was not in him to turn down any opportunity to be a figurehead, he was acutely conscious of not having held so lowly a position (the first time, it was a pinnacle!) in over ten years. Back then it was a position given by appointment. In the years since, these decisions have increasingly been made by election. Minister progressed into ever-greater circles of influence, elected to the District Board and then to the Legislative Council, but as the franchise expanded beyond the elite, his decline was drawn: he can no longer drum up a majority vote beyond the taluk. Now, Brahmins will vote for him because he is one of them, and select non-Brahmins if he can still do something for them. But he never thought to court peasants-it never occurred to him that they could have any impact on his political future.
While the Self-Respecters’ politics take something from each of Congress (they are for independence) and Justice (they advocate rule by non-Brahmins), they are resolved on overturning the elite class to which all the salon-goers belong, regardless of caste. These men enjoy debating Self-Respect politics, and even take the Dravidians’ side in the safety of their small gathering, but they are scared of the Self-Respecters and have no intention of going near that performance tonight.
Dr. Kittu Iyer’s eye softens as it lands on Vairum, who rarely speaks here, despite his frequent attendance. “You, at least, we can count on to take the right side in this debate: it’s wonderful of your mother to be doing this for you, and the whole community will benefit, especially the illiterates, who get so few such uplifting opportunities.”
Unsurprisingly, the conventional audience gets by far the greater share that first night. Vairum attends, as he is expected to, with Vani, and feels acutely self-conscious. He thinks at first that this is because those in the audience fawningly make a place for him at the front, expressing gratitude that his mother has done this for them. Perhaps he is uncomfortable because they all know the reason Sivakami has sponsored this: his and Vani’s childlessness. He realizes, however, over the course of the performance, which he finds predictably conventional and uninspiring, that, although he is religious, he has nothing in common with the Brahmins who surround him.
He unconsciously fingers the old silver coin flipped into his waistband as he thinks how he has no friends among the Brahmins here. Since returning, he has made friends mostly among upper-caste non-Brahmins in Kulithalai while his Cholapatti neighbours remain as distasteful to him as ever, in their narrowness and lack of generosity, which he thinks he sees in his mother, also: she will help anyone of the clan, but her goodwill, he thinks, stops at the exit to the Brahmin quarter. He has also heard them complaining about his generosity, of all things, he thinks, getting worked up even as he sits before the decorated stage, his mind far from the action. He has bought a number of their plots of land, which they had let go through their laziness and bad decisions, and turned them around. They got a better price from him than they would from anyone else, but then they complain to one another! Jealousy. And they can’t stand that he is friends with non-Brahmins, and that he hired a non-Brahmin manager for his rice milclass="underline" the best applicant, a born leader, even if he is from one of the peasant castes.
Why should I pretend solidarity with my caste? he is fuming, as they sit around him, smelling of holy ash and hair oil, gasping at all the familiar plot points. What have they ever done for me?
He waits out the performance, more for Vani’s sake than anything, but it is a torment.
THE NEXT MORNING, when Muthu Reddiar arrives at the salon entrance, mopping his brow with an outsized kerchief and twirling the ends of his moustaches to guard against wilting, he wheezes, “Bets are being paid out at the club.”
“The people have shown their might!” an unfamiliar voice crows in Tamil behind him. It’s Murthy, his hair oiled and slicked back with care into a kudumi, minus one lock hanging before his ear. His kurta is stained with what might be squash. He occasionally drops in at the salon to tout Brahmin uplift: communal politics have led Brahmins, too, to realize they might claim some unified identity. “Tradition offers reassurance, consolation,” Murthy puffs. “It will always win out over sensationalism. Clearly, the people’s affection for the real Ramayana will triumph over childish stunts.”
Minister always welcomes Murthy (despite the man’s disregard for the English usage rule) as a link to a constituency best cultivated via its zealots. Still, he hates having to think in communal terms and yearns for the times when he had only to fulfill promises to important individuals.
“Bah! The people are scared.” Ranga Chettiar jabs his finger aggressively at Murthy, who looks surprised and pained. “You and your ilk have cowed them for eight thousand years. But someday”-the Chettiar’s voice dives deep into his most profundo basso-“someday, he will break the chains of Aryan domination and come into the full flowering of his Dravidian manhood…”
“So breaking the chains of British domination and coming into our Indian manhood takes no place in your scheme?” Dr. Kittu Iyer’s narrow jowls quiver.
“Now, now.” Minister’s tone is more censorious than he would wish, but the doctor has hit a nerve. “If one is born and comes of age within a united empire, loyalty to it is as loyalty to parents and ancestors. If one renounces one’s heritage, one is nothing.”
Minister catches Vairum’s eye and suddenly feels fiercely annoyed with the younger man for observing all, daily, in silence, never taking a stand. Vairum clearly has no political ambitions-why is he here?
“Isn’t that right, Vairum?” Minister lobs. “Look at what your mother is doing for you-you owe her the world, isn’t it?”
Vairum wags his head noncommittally. Such statements, his gesture might imply, are self-evident and need hardly be spoken.
Vairum goes again that night to the Ramayana Sivakami sponsored but finds himself unable to bear being surrounded by Brahmins. Several of his friends told him that day that they would be attending the other Ramayana because they were interested in supporting its message of non-Brahmin liberation. He is interested in that, too, and thinks, They are my gods. Can I not worship them as well in an atmosphere I find more sympathetic?
He takes Vani home, then goes and joins his friends. He is a little shocked by what he sees: Rama and Lakshmana as comic villains, Sita as a harlot, and Ravana made to seem a hero-as though this story were written on the other side of the world from the one he knows. He isn’t sure how to reconcile this with his daily prayers to the Ramar in his home, except to think that his prayers are private. He has his convictions and can’t escape his heritage. They are the gods of my home and I am obliged to worship them, he thinks, but he is not obliged to worship them in the company of people he cannot like or respect. How can he share their religious feeling if he doesn’t share their caste sentiment?
He decides that the Self-Respect Ramayana is not an act of devotion, but it doesn’t need to be. He prays at home. This is something different.
When Sivakami serves him breakfast the next morning, she asks Vairum to report on the performance, which she will not attend until the last night. His response is predictably disappointing.
“Amma, even weddings are more unique than these Ramayana performances,” he dryly points out. “Why waste breath? Attendance was good.”