‘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 waterline meandering home from the well intersects their path. Sneha lifts her hand, filtering 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