the sun through her pallav. There is no pantone for that particular orange, diluted with sunshine, distilled through the muslin, alive, organic, elemental, yet changing as soon as the mind grasps its tone. It is truly a colour created from the earth. Here the women prepare their own dyes from leaves and tubers. It takes three seasons to extract an unyielding indigo blue, and even longer for a hectic yellow that doesn’t fade. But what is time to them? They have learned that degree of patience that favours minute industry, recherché dyeing techniques, intricate patterns, tiny stitches, weaving something out of nothing. And yet, they take their colours for granted and don’t recognise the certain alchemy of the turquoise green as deep as a bountiful pond; or the freedom of the yellow as weighty as a sunflower dial; or the self-indulgence of the saffron as loquacious as a cloudy sunset. The women go quietly about their business, unaware of the psychedelic circus that endures without their attendance.
At this hour, the men can be found under the banyan smoking a hookah and listening to the news on Lala Ram’s transistor radio. The power of this innocuous activity cannot be overstated. Talk, and implicit belief in the common wisdom of the peer group is what unites them. There is only one type of man under the banyan in this place of tight traditions and few choices, cut from a die which fashions uncomplicated puzzle shapes that link easily together to form a larger picture. Each time someone wants to break free, he is reminded of Kalu, the untouchable Sudra who dared to bring water from the village well a mile away instead of the river four miles off. He had every bone in his Sudra body broken and his wife had her nose cut off. Such popular justice is the staunchest protector of tradition, and deviation, even the slightest one, is unimaginable.
Seeta Ram hurries to the banyan to catch the tail end of the news on the communal transistor. The news is slow today, so the men twiddle the knobs till they hear the scratchy sound of Hindi movie music. These days they strain to listen for word about the bandit surrender, but it doesn’t come.
The Red Ruins are waiting for the women, pink with anticipation in the buttery light. Mamta clasps her pallav closer. This is the place she did most of her growing up, picking wild spinach and berries. Lata Bai walks to the east-facing wall. Her daughters follow close behind. They pray together. The praying is reserved for females on the bride’s side.
What does Lata Bai really know of Mamta’s husband and his family? Not much. She doesn’t even know that he has two children from a previous marriage. She knows nothing of his nature and yet she is bequeathing her daughter to him in good, bad or indifferent faith. Why? Because Mamta is someone else’s garden, a female burden to be rid of. Even her second daughter, lucky Ragini, had to pickle her lemons right until she produced her male twins.
The chants leave Lata Bai’s lips on an anonymous journey. She has the drought to thank for the purity of her knowledge and the discipline of her ritual. That’s the time her family had turned to rigorous prayer. Only Lata Bai knows the true meaning of the words, whereas her daughters know their essence, the stories they tell, and the superstitions they embrace.
Lata Bai circles the air with the thali, dispersing more incense smoke as the flame cavorts in the breeze but doesn’t go out. It is a robust oily flame, culminating in strong, creamy smoke. She looks over her shoulder, Mamta steps forward to take the thali from her mother’s hands. She continues to sing her mother’s song, but she does so very softly. She’s afraid to make an audible mistake. Finally it’s Sneha’s turn. She hands Shanti to her mother and starts with her own smoke circles.
‘Ohm, Ohm, Ohm . . .’ the beginning of the universe. First there was nothing and then there was the cosmic sound Ohm, which manifested Nothing into Everything. Its residue resides in all nature, the sound of the wind, the warmth of sunshine, the blue of the sea, in every heart, in every thought. It is the link to eternity, it will transcend everything, never ending, once sounded always enduring. The mother sings the Gayatri Mantra, the girls join in. The energy is transferred back and forth between the women and they know exactly when to stop together . . . Just like that, there’s silence.
‘This prayer is very important for you, Mamta. Devi is your everything. She will fulfil you and protect you.’ Her mother’s tone is sombre.
‘Let’s see if there are any fingerprints.’
‘Sneha, your head is filled with hay,’ says her mother, but she walks them to the other side of the wall to fulfil their curiosity.
‘Aiee.’ Sneha drops to the ground. Not only are there prints, there are also broken bangles, hundreds of them, lying on the ground. Sneha picks the glass out of her foot. She licks her finger to seal the bleeding wound. Lata Bai sits on a rock to feed Shanti, saying, ‘We should be getting back soon. Your bapu will be wondering.’
‘Amma, so many bangles. Did all their husbands die?’ Soon to join their ranks, Mamta is worried for the fate of all the married women in the world.
‘Must be this Daku business. Some in his gang maybe didn’t want to surrender and went out looting instead. This is the result.’ Lata Bai scours the ground for offerings, picking out discarded spices from far richer plates than hers. She ties the cinnamon, jaggery, cardamom and fennel seed in a ball at the end of her pallav.
‘What will the widows do?’
The mother shrugs.
The women start walking back to the hut. The green and red are upright, the orange bobs up and down all the way, like the float on a fishing line, bouncing unevenly on a wounded foot.
Mamta’s nervousness is a runaway horse. It gathers speed as her mother and sister knead the dough for the chapattis and boil the last of the tea leaves. The mother flavours the tea with offerings from the Red Ruins. ‘Thank you, Devi. Jai ho Devi, Devi jai ho,’ she whispers each time she tosses in a spice.
Mamta needs something to do. She’s twisted the end of her pallav into permanent creases which radiate out to the rest of her sari from the damaged corner like a fan. ‘So what is the first thing I’ll have to do?’
Her mother and sister don’t look up from their work. Sneha has already started on the chillies for the chutney and her hands have started to burn. ‘You’ll get to know by and by.’ Usually her mother loves to talk while cooking, but today is different. Today the weevils are worrying her almost as much as the fact that Jivkant and Ragini haven’t arrived.
‘They will be arriving soon.’ Seeta Ram struggles out of his kurta and puts on a fresh one. The boys stay as they are. They have nothing to change into.
Lata Bai gives Lucky Sister’s gold earrings to Mamta. ‘Put these on.’ Mamta approaches the mirror hanging from the tin door with a length of wire, the family’s only piece of vanity. She can’t see her whole face in it at once any more. The last big wind blew it off the door and left a huge horizontal crack in it. Luckily it didn’t break completely. Her face is divided along the crack, and the two halves don’t match up.
She looks at her lips first. They are her best feature. She turns away from her birthmark sulking like a child might from a disappointing present. The yellowed skin crinkles as she looks closer. She bares her teeth, trying to look even uglier to satisfy some desire to hurt inside. She has started to despair. She replaces the sacred basil sticks in her earlobes with the gold earrings.
‘Now what are you looking at? Haven’t you seen yourself hundreds of times before? Spending all day at the mirror as if you were a great beauty or something!’
‘Stop it, she’s only putting on her earrings. On this one day . . .’
Seeta Ram doesn’t let her finish: ‘Every day is “this one day” where Mamta is concerned. Yours is precisely the kind
