Of Marriageable Age (5 page)

'You will fill this book. I want you to write on every single line. You are not to eat or rest before you are finished.'

T
HAT WAS
how Ma found Saroj when she came home before sundown. Bent over an open page and carefully pencilling in the words Baba had given her, cheeks wet with tears. She felt Ma's hand on her head and looked up and more tears rushed out, a torrent of them. She heaved with sobs.

Ma lifted her from the chair and carried her to the bed. She took off her nightdress and turned her on her tummy so she could inspect the wounds. She disappeared into her own room and into the
puja
room. Or maybe she would bring the sword and go and kill Baba. That was what Saroj wanted most.

When Ma returned she was mixing something in a cup. It was one of her special potions, Saroj knew. With fingers as light and soft as a feather Ma smoothed a cool paste all over the wounds, and Saroj lay there and let healing sink through her. When Ma was finished she sat the child up and wrapped a sheet loosely around her, took her on her lap and held her, not saying a word, taking care not to touch her wounds. Saroj tried to speak.

'I have to write some more!'

'No. It is over. All finished, Saroj.'

Saroj thought then it was all finished with Baba and rejoiced because they'd go away and leave Baba forever. But Ma didn't mean that. She only meant the punishment was over, and that Baba would not strike her again, which he didn't. But Saroj really hated Baba now. A few weeks later the Camerons moved out. Saroj never spoke to Wayne or any of them again. Baba sent Parvati away forever, because she had allowed Saroj to play with Wayne. Saroj never saw Parvati again, either. She hated Baba for that most of all.

M
A WAS MAKING DHAL PURIS
, flinging them into the air, clapping them as they fell light as feathers like flakes of layered silk across her palms. They smelled of warm ghee and soft dough baking and aromatic spices, so tender they'd melt in the mouth.

'Ma,' Saroj began, tugging at the skirt of Ma's sari.

Ma looked down and smiled. Her hands were white with flour up to the elbows. 'Yes, sweetheart?'

'Why's negro bad?'

Ma's brow creased but her smile remained. Her hands went on working as she spoke.

'Don't believe that, dear. Don't ever believe that. Nobody's bad just because of the way they look. It's what's inside a person that counts.'

'But, Ma, what's inside a person? When people look different are they different inside, too?'

Ma didn't answer, she was looking at her hands now, kneading a ball of dough. Saroj thought she had forgotten her and so she said, 'Ma?'

Ma turned her eyes back to Saroj. 'I'll show you in a moment, dear. I'll just finish making these.'

Saroj watched the stack of dhal puris grow into a flat round tower and then Ma said she was finished and covered them with a cloth and washed her hands. Then she opened the cupboard where she kept her spare jars and bottles and took out six jars and placed them on the kitchen counter.

'Do you see these jars, Saroj? Are they all the same?'

Saroj shook her head. 'No, Ma.' The glasses were all different. There was a short flat one and a tall thin one and a medium-sized one, and other shapes in between. Some were different colours: green or brown or clear.

'All right. Now, just imagine these jars are people. People with different shapes of bodies and colours of skin. Can you do that?' Saroj nodded. 'Right. Well, now the bodies are empty. But look…’ Ma picked up a big glass jug, filled it at the tap and poured water into all the jars.

'See, Saroj? Now all the glasses are filled. All the bodies are alive! They have what we call a
spirit
. Now, is that spirit the same in all the glasses, or different?'

'It's the same, Ma. So people are —'

But Ma broke in. 'Now, can you run into the pantry and get the tin where I keep my dyes? You know it, don't you?'

Saroj was back even before Ma had finished speaking. Ma opened the tin and picked up one of the tiny bottles of powdered dye. It was cherry-coloured. Ma held the bottle over one of the jars and tipped a little of the powder into the water. Immediately, the water turned pink-red. Ma returned the cap to the bottle and picked up another one. The water turned lime-green. She did that six times and each time the water turned a different colour so that in the end Ma had six different shaped jars of six different colours.

'So, Saroj, now you answer me. Are these people here all the same inside, or are they all different?'

Saroj took her time before answering. She puckered her brow and thought hard. Finally she said, 'Well, Ma, really they're all the same but the colours make them different.'

'Yes, but what is more real, the sameness or the differences?'

Saroj thought hard again. Then she said: 'The sameness, Ma. Because the sameness holds up the differences. The differences are only the powders you put in.'

'Exactly. So think of all these people as having a spirit which is the same in each one, and yet each one is also different — that is because each person has a different personality. A personality is made up of thoughts, and everyone has different kinds of thoughts. Some have loving thoughts, some have angry thoughts, some have sad thoughts, some have mean thoughts. Most people have jumbles of thoughts — but everybody's thoughts are different, and so everybody is different. Different outside and different inside. And they see those differences in each other and they squabble and fight, because everyone thinks the way he is, is right. But if they could see through the differences to the oneness beyond, linking them all, then…’

'Then what, Ma?'

'Then we would all be so wise, Saroj, and so happy!'

M
A TOLD
Saroj it was wrong to hate. She said you should love all people, even Baba, even when he wouldn't let her play with Wayne and when he sent Parvati away. Every evening Ma ushered the three children into the
puja
room, and while they watched with folded hands she'd hold an incense stick into the tiny eternal flame till it flickered alight and a thin tendril of pungent sweet smoke rose to the ceiling. She'd gently wave the incense before the
lingam,
then gesture for them all to sit; she'd place the
sruti
box between her crossed legs and pour out her heart in song to her Lord, and they, huddled around her on the straw mat, would sing too.

Singing seemed to unseal Ma's lips. She'd tell them stories of the great heroes and heroines of Indian myths and legends, Arjuna and Karna, Rama and Hanuman, Sita and Draupadi, men and women of the warrior caste who feared neither pain nor death and never flinched in danger. She told them a great secret, the secret of immunity from pain.
Go behind the thought-body
, Ma said.
Enter the silence of spirit where there is no pain...

Indrani listened with only one ear. She was the eldest, the sweet, obedient one. Ganesh listened with ears all agog, drinking in every word.

At first, Saroj too had listened with both ears. But then Baba had done things for which she could not forgive him. He whipped her when she played with Wayne, and made those nice Camerons move out. He sent Parvati away. He tore her from the people she loved, and so she made up her mind to hate him. Baba was evil, a wicked demon, worse than Ravana or any of the Rakshasas, and there was no Krishna or Arjuna or Rama to conquer him.

So while Ma told her stories of love and bravery Saroj brooded on Baba, and a little seed of ire surfaced in her heart. She watched this seed, and it sprouted. She nourished it a little, and it grew.
He hurt me,
she said to herself.
One day when I'm big I will hurt him back.

CHAPTER THREE

SAVITRI

Madras, India. 1921

S
HE WAS
the cook's daughter, his youngest and dearest child, the apple of his eye, the spark to his funeral pyre. That long hot summer she was six years old, her hair falling over her shoulders in two thick black plaits fastened with bits of thread and twists of jasmine, and she was thin and brown and lithe and in spite of the long loose skirts that fell to her ankles, wild as a boy. She loved David, and always would.

Iyer the cook and his wife Nirmala knew of her love, and watched it with mixed feelings. It is not a good thing when servants and masters play together, and was not Savitri David's servant? If they themselves were servants, wasn't their daughter the master's son's servant? How could she be friends with the young master? It was not proper. But friends they were, and who were Iyer and Nirmala to forbid what the young master wished, and what Master and Mistress allowed?

So Savitri had the run of the house and the garden. She was not like a girl at all. She climbed trees and she played cricket, she could hit a mango with a sling-shot stone as well as David, and their laughter rivalled the birdsong in all of Oleander Gardens. When she climbed trees she tucked her skirt and petticoat between her legs and stuck the hem into the waistband, and when she played cricket she lifted her skirts and showed her knees, and she never wore the anklets she was supposed to wear. She was a most indecorous little girl. Her parents were helpless, for when they reminded her to keep her skirts down she looked at them with big innocent eyes and nodded and promised, but somehow she always forgot.

There were other children, but none like these two. Savitri's four brothers, Mani, Gopal, Natesan and Narayan, kept to their own quarters, and so did the other servants' children. The Iyers lived at the back gate that opened onto Old Market Street, which was as busy and loud as any other street in Madras. The Lindsay property, Fairwinds, ended in the row of seven servants' houses, each of which had a gate opening on to the street. From Old Market Street the row of little houses was just that, a row of houses, and no passer-by could tell that each house had a back gate opening onto paradise.

The back drive divided the servants' quarters into two areas. On one side were the Iyers — a little grander, a little apart from the others, for they were Brahmins — Muthu the gardener with family, Kannan the dhobi with family, and Pandian the driver with family. On the other side lived the sweeper Kuppusamy with family, Shakoor the night-watchman with family, and Khan, unmarried. Khan was the Admiral's wheelchair-pusher. The Admiral's male nurse, the Christian Joseph, lived in the house with the
sahibs
. And no-one entered paradise who did not work there, certainly not the children — except Savitri.

The front drive led into Atkinson Avenue, a wide, quiet street lined with jacarandas, where now and again the occasional pith-helmeted
sahib
in white drills cycled straight-backed to the Club, or two
memsahibs
strolled along the pavement, exchanging gossip and news of Home, or an a
yah
pushed a pram. In fact,
ayahs
were the only Indians to be seen on Atkinson Avenue — except of course the proud drivers of those black, hearse-like vehicles that sailed majestically down the middle of the street, and the watchmen dozing at the gates, and, every afternoon at three, Savitri.

It was a long walk from the house to Atkinson Avenue, a long sandy driveway winding through towering bougainvillea passageways, behind palms and a veritable wood of flames-of-the-forest and jacarandas. Near Vijayan's house the driveway calmed down and became more docile, lined with red, pink and yellow hibiscus bushes, a few oleanders and frangipanis, and bordered by canna lilies. Singh and his family lived in a pretty little whitewashed cottage next to the front gate. It had marigolds and jasmine bushes in the front garden and papaya trees clustered in the back around the well, and even if Singh was not on duty his cheery wife would be washing clothes in the back and Vijayan's dogs barked at you, but not at Savitri, for they loved her and ran up, wagging their tails and yapping when she came, leaping up at her, rolling in the sand so she could rub their bellies. She wasn't supposed to touch dogs, for they were unclean; but she did so because she loved them and they knew it.

If you turned left into Atkinson Avenue, and walked for five minutes past the Wyndham-Jones estate to the brilliant red half-circle where the flame-of-the-forest reached over the hibiscus hedge and cast its blossoms to the pavement, and crossed the avenue right there, you'd find a little path between the Todd and the Pennington properties. And if you walked down this path — though Savitri never walked, she skipped, she danced, she ran backwards alongside David and sang for him — for another ten minutes, you came to the beach, and the Indian Ocean, and you could bathe.

David and Savitri were learning to swim that summer. Now, while there was still time, before the Lindsays took off for the hill station Ootacamund; now, in the few weeks they still had together.

It was April. The heat was unbearable and the water cool, delicious, and it just wasn't fair. Savitri was sure she could easily learn to swim, because she knew all the movements and practised them at night sitting up on her mat, the frog-like clapping of her legs and the graceful curves of her arms, and she was envious because David had learned already from his teacher Mr Baldwin, who took him some mornings, and she wanted to do everything that David did, just exactly everything, and it just wasn't fair. If she had been wearing shorts, like David, of course she'd have been able to swim long ago; but she had to wear this long gathered skirt, and when she swam it just would not stay tucked into her hem. Yards of cotton clung to her legs or swirled between them or wound themselves tightly around them like ropes, and if you couldn't move your legs freely then it was obvious — you couldn't swim. It just wasn't fair.

‘Why don’t you wear shorts, like me?’ said David, coming up for air.

‘Because I’m a girl, silly!’ said Savitri. ‘Girls wear skirts. And when they grow up they wear saris. I’m going to wear a sari like Amma when I grow up and get married.’

‘Oh!’ said David. He thought for a while. Then he said, “And I will wear long trousers, like Papa, when I’m a man!’