baby, at Saraswati Stores and has to drag her thoughts away from his history. He was accepted by his grandmother as one of her own to redress the deficiency of a womb that produced only girls. Had he been a girl, he wouldn’t be alive today.
Her disquiet temporarily allayed, Mamta rolls on to her stomach, propping her chin up with the backs of her open hands, still careful with her hennaed palms. ‘Tell me about Shakuntala. Just the short version. How she had pearls in her hair and beauty –’
‘No, enough!’ says Lata Bai, slightly annoyed now by her memory. Each time she’d told that story, she’d replaced the main character with her own daughter. But it is now time to acknowledge that Mamta is anything but beautiful. Fantasies are the worst thing a bride can take to her new home.
Mamta lingers all day with her hennaed hands held out to the sun like a beggar asking for alms. It is custom, and custom alone that makes this the women’s day, the day they rest and beautify themselves. Seeta Ram doesn’t approve, but he can’t do anything about it. Today Lata Bai and Sneha will do all the cooking.
‘I am the fruit on your vine, craving water from your hand. Why do I let you go, my innocent one? I am the dove in your cage, cooing for your attention, Why do I let you go, my innocent one? When your palanquin departs there will be emptiness . . .’
It is a while before Lata Bai realises she is humming Kamla’s song. She switches off her internal melody; it brings her no pleasure. Today Mamta will become paraya, the other, and when she needs succour or solace after this day, she may not seek it from her mother because she belongs to another.
Shanti has been quiet most of the day. Lata Bai has fed her twice since the morning, but she didn’t feel like sucking much. She’s blown on her face at least four times for a reaction since the morning to make sure she was still alive. She would have skimmed off some of the daal water for her, but because of the weevils she thinks she might stick to breast milk today.
She looks in on the baby. She is sleeping peacefully, each eye ringed by a cluster of flies thick as smudged kohl. She shoos off the flies, wets the corner of her pallav in some water and bends over her to clean out her eyes. Then she changes her mind. Instead she opens her blouse and squeezes a bit of milk out of her wrinkled right nipple. She cleans the baby’s eyes with breast milk. Shanti whimpers, but stays sleeping. Her forehead feels clammy, but Lata Bai ignores the dampness and goes about her business with gusto. If her daughter has to fall sick at all, she is determined that it will be only when the government doctor-van arrives in Gopalpur, and not a moment before.
‘You know what, they are coming to the wedding. I overheard Ram Singh Sahib and Lokend Sahib talking to each other,’ Prem bursts in, followed by the sweet smell of roses. ‘Look what I’ve brought back. When I told Asmara Didi my sister was getting married today she cut all her roses and gave them to me. “Go, decorate your house like a king,” she said to me.’
‘I wish she’d given us something to feed the guests instead,’ says Lata Bai. ‘Did you get any butter? Any milk?’
‘Yes, yes . . .’ He pulls out a parcel of ficus leaves from his kurta pocket and a pot of milk. The leaves glisten from the grease. The smell of stale milk mingles with the roses.
‘She’ll part with fresh roses, but not fresh butter.’
Prem looks at his mother, at the unfamiliar sound of bitterness in her voice. ‘Look, I got this too –’ He places a lump of jaggery in her hand, the size of a grapefruit, and looks at her, his eyes saying Happy?
She looks away. Yes, she should be happy . . . one daughter producing only sons, one son with a good job in the railway, Prem working at the Big House and bringing back pats of butter and, after Mamta’s wedding, one less female mouth to feed. What more can she ask for? What more could her heart possibly want?
‘Sneha, get to work!’
‘Amma, there’s time yet.’ Sneha wants to leave the henna on her hands a little longer.
‘Sneha,’ she warns, ‘chapattis.’
‘Yes, Amma.’ She washes her hands in a cup of water. ‘What about Jivkant Bhaia?’
‘And what about your brother? A fancy job and not one rupee sent back to his family in all this time.’ She speaks in the third person to disassociate herself from her offspring.
Prem says nothing, but his eyes give him away. Jivkant is who Prem aspires to be, except for the not-one-rupee-sent-back-to-his-family part. Perhaps one day he too will leave to find his place on a train going somewhere. He can hear the faintest whistle blow across the fields, and when it does, he lifts his head suddenly like a watchdog and looks over to see if there is any smoke, proof that the whistle isn’t just a fibrillation of his desire. He doesn’t know what Jivkant has made of his life, but he’s meant to be coming back for Mamta’s wedding. That much he knows. Prem had taken his brother’s letter to the Big House to be read, and it said that Jivkant was coming back. Prem had wondered if Jivkant had written the letter himself and for a moment he’d felt the high fever of jealousy ride up under his skin and bring a flush to his face.
‘Even Lucky Sister sent us something. She didn’t just fritter the money away on herself, and she had more reason to . . . the way we all shunned her,’ says Lata Bai. In spite of her anger she can see that comparing her son’s railway job to her sister’s prostitution is unfair. ‘Still, there’s time. Perhaps he will show up for the wedding tonight, after all. Well, you might as well put the roses out. Keep a few nice ones for your sisters’ hair,’ she says, softening.
Lata Bai pulls the sari tight round her daughter’s waist. At her age, Mamta still can’t get the pleats right. Sneha is more accomplished at tying a sari.
‘Stand up straight!’ The mother tugs at the five-metre cloth, dragging her daughter with it like a piece of driftwood on a sea of red. ‘Can’t you stand still?’ Mamta goes rigid to obey her mother’s command, but the moment is spoilt.
The widow Kamla left straight after lunch, so there are no outsiders at the house now. Though Prem has been sent home early by Asmara Didi to help with the wedding preparations, he works the fields with his father and brother. Why waste labour? Almost a man, his back is bent over exactly like Seeta Ram’s. He is most like his father physically, but he has his mother’s softness. Mohit never turned out quite as robust. He has the delicate frame of a girl, long wiry legs and a skinny chest with two sunken nipples defiling the even brown terrain.
‘We’re off.’ The mother is dressed in her green sari. The one she wears on every special occasion. It looks new. Her oiled hair makes a huge knot at the nape of her neck. She has no need for pins. The man and boys look up in unison.
They briefly see a flash of green, one of pale orange and another of red. Seeta Ram recognises the red sari as the one he bought for Mamta for her wedding with borrowed money last week. He shakes his head, trying to rid himself of the memory of the incarcerating thumbprint.
The women walk purposefully away, Lata Bai carrying a thali with a bit of jaggery, sindhoor and rose petals. Sneha holds Shanti; and Mamta, the bride-to-be, walks unfettered. The flute plays on.
The evenings here are long and languid, it is well before sunset.
The mother sets the pace, slow, sure, deferential. The flame has gone out of the sunshine. Still the stones cling to their heat and poke the women’s bare feet. At this time of day the land is feminine. It is full of colour, both divine and human.
A
