SIVAKAMI CONTINUES TO OBSERVE VAIRUM, without asking questions, which he does not welcome. Her tension about his professional prospects has ebbed with his increasing success. He not only managed their own lands very effectively, but purchased other parcels not thought to be productive and turned them around, quickly saving enough to buy a rice mill, whose output he has also increased, Muchami tells her, by 40 per cent. She has stopped worrying about him in this regard, but he still has no child, and it wears on him, especially as Thangam’s children continue steadily to fill their house.
Thangam has given birth to two more daughters. The manjakkani money has been put to ample use for Laddu’s poonal, and Saradha’s wedding, which was contracted four years prior, her first Deepavali and trips to her husband’s home, and her coming-of-age ceremony and departure last year. She married into a stable family in Thiruchi, distant relatives, and it is deeply satisfying to Sivakami to know she is so well settled. The relentlessly jolly Visalam has married but not yet gone to her husband’s house. Laddu is nine, a resolutely unambitious boy; Sivakami would be tearing her hair out if she had any. Vairum tutors him in math and science, and she has just hired a tutor in Sanskrit, but none of it seems to help. Sita, who came to stay late last year, is six years old and already has the black tongue of a harridan, a curse or insult always at the ready. Thangam’s first two children didn’t prepare Sivakami for the second two, and she prays daily for energy and cunning enough to raise them as she must.
It is to this that her thoughts always turn as she does her chores, as today, when she is slicing a turnip and muttering a mantra in worship of Rama. Rama Ramaya Namaha. Rama Ramaya Namaha…
“Mundai!”
The ugly word jumps like a toad across her thoughts and she hollers, “Sita!” She considers rising and finding her foul-mouthed granddaughter but decides it’s better the child learn to obey a summons. “Sita! Come here!” Sivakami is shocked by the tone of her own voice. Guiding Thangam’s first two through the maze of manners and comportment never required any but the lightest touch. Where on earth would the child have heard a word like that? What could cause her to think she could use it?
The little girl sidles into the doorway, eyes cast down.
“That word has never been spoken in this house before. You are responsible for bringing this ugliness into our home.”
Sita pouts. It’s clear she feels bad, but only because she has upset her grandmother. That she has called her older sister a shaven-headed widow-for this, she is not repentant.
“Go study and not a peep.”
Sita slinks away, her beautiful features obscured by this deep yellow rage she seems to have been born with, and which her first five years, living in God-only-knows what kind of neighbourhoods, did nothing to temper. Sivakami hasn’t tried to fathom it. Sita is here now and a good upbringing takes a small creature with all its quirks and kinks and trains it to behave like any worthy person, fulfilling duty and accepting fate.
From what she could hear, Sita was frustrated because she wanted Visalam to play a game, which Visalam cannot because she is menstruating, isolated in the back room. For the first time: Visalam came of age yesterday. Sivakami thought it a shame the child’s mother-in-law lived too far away to come for the celebration but then it might have been better that she didn’t see her son’s wife giggling throughout the most solemn parts of the ceremony and guffawing through the gay ones. Visalam finds everything funny. Sivakami tells her to watch that the crows don’t snatch the little rice flour morsels of vadam as they dry on the roof-hilarious. When, once or twice annually, they choose new clothes, Visalam must invariably be excused, laughing so hard she’s useless. School, needless to say, has been a trial, but that’s all over now that she is no longer a girl.
Anyone around her who is inclined to humour is compelled to laugh with her. Anyone not so inclined feels mocked. By some stroke of God’s grace, however, she married into a relaxed and mirthful family, perhaps the only one Sivakami has ever met which is truly so. While they generally seem capable of the modicum of sobriety Visalam is never able to summon, they are indulgent toward the girl, who is, after all, obedient and respectful.
As Sivakami stands to reach for the sambar podi, she feels a little trickle. She clenches her thighs and hobbles out along the platform behind the house and back in through the door of the back room. There, she sees a bead of red releasing a trail of smaller beads as it rounds her ankle bone and descends her instep to soak into the brick floor. She reaches under the cot for the box of rags and discreetly fixes one round her hips before shouting for Sita, muttering, as she always does, against the inconvenience of it. “Really, it’s too silly-a grandmother, widowed for how many years? Sita!” she calls again, and Sita, who had been crouched over a school book in the garden and pretending not to hear, pokes her head around the door. “Go next door and tell Rukmini that I am in the room with Visalam. Go and come, you.”
Visalam is wheezing through her knuckles. Sivakami squats in a corner and chuckles a little, too. She normally doesn’t look at her granddaughters during the days of their pollution, but must admit it is nice to have this extra time with Visalam, knowing that soon the girl will leave for her marital home.
Menstruation always makes Sivakami feel strange, though she merely trades one kind of untouchability for another. Where she is normally too pure to be touched, not to mention a potent reminder of feminine destructive power, for these three days she is too impure to be touched, and a potent reminder of feminine procreative power.
And now there is a knocking and hallooing at the front door: Laddu’s Sanskrit teacher. Sivakami shouts, “Enter, enter!” but cannot make herself heard above Vani’s playing. Thankfully, Rukmini arrives at the front door in the same moment.
“Sivakami!” Rukmini shouts from the front. She has, for thirty years now, managed Sivakami’s household during menstrual leaves of absence. “Sivakami?”
“I am here,” Sivakami replies, closing to a crack the narrow double door leading onto the main hall.
“Sivakami, young Kesavan is here to tutor Laddu in Sanskrit.”
“Is Laddu there?”
Now Rukmini starts shouting Laddu’s name.
Sivakami tries to make a suggestion. “Is… Rukmini Akka! Is Sita… Rukmini Akka!”
Rukmini stops.
Sivakami asks, “Is Sita there? Ask her to find Laddu.”
“No,” replies the other woman. “Sita stayed at my house to eat biscuits and play with the dog.”
“Oh. Young Kesavan, I’m very sorry.” Sivakami speaks through the crack between the doors. “Only the third session and Laddu is absent again. I’m so sorry. Rukmini, ask Sita to go find her brother. Or find Muchami and ask Muchami to find Laddu.”
“Yes, um, I reminded him,” the young man answers as Rukmini bustles away importantly, “right after his Sanskrit class in school.”
This does nothing to relieve Sivakami’s embarrassment.
“I’d like”-he moves nearer the door and clears his throat-“to, um… there are other boys in the class who could use the extra help. I will tell you in confidence, however”-he coughs but sounds as if he’s gaining surety-“that their parents cannot afford a tutor. Or they cannot see the necessity of Sanskrit. Though it is a necessity, as I have told you-the right colleges look very positively on those students who are familiar with the classical language. Perhaps, if you would agree, I can suggest that those boys attend, here with Laddu, to help lend more of an… atmosphere. They are boys Laddu likes. He would make sure to come home if they were coming also. He wouldn’t miss it.”
Laddu has been falling dreadfully behind in his studies, lacking aptitude, conscience and enthusiasm. Sivakami wonders, when she looks at him, whether she is seeing what Goli was like as a young chap. Pressure to play host might be just the thing.
“Certainly, Kesavan. You invite the boys. That’s good.” Sivakami feels slightly vertiginous and lifts her sari pallu off her back to her shoulders so that the cool wall is against her skin. “Is Rukmini there? Rukmini!”
Rukmini has just returned.
“Rukmini, give young Kesavan a cup of milk.”
Kesavan makes clucking noises in protest, but Sivakami speaks over him. “Find some murrukku and laddu as well.”
“If you have Laddu, I’ll teach the class!” Kesavan lamely attempts to make light of the situation. Rukmini laughs a little and Visalam as if she will never stop, but Sivakami is glad no one can see her face and lies flat on the cool floor, willing the season of cramps to pass.
Rukmini takes the vegetables that Sivakami has already sliced back to her own kitchen, where she and her mother-in-law integrate them into their sambar. Sita, Laddu, Vani and Vairum eat there that evening, as do Muchami and Mari the next day. Rukmini brings food for Visalam, and leaves the monkeys’ offering in the customary spot in the forest beyond the courtyard. Rukmini and Murthy even scold Laddu on Sivakami’s behalf, though Sivakami scolds him, too.
The next day, Vani gets her period: Sivakami had been expecting this. They have been roughly synchronized for years. The mood in the room shifts, though, with Vani’s entrance: five years, and she and Vairum have yet to produce an heir. Vairum’s evident and mounting emotion at this lack gives Sivakami one more reason to feel ashamed whenever she has her period. But of course it isn’t her menstruation that renders Vairum unable to meet anyone’s eye during his wife’s isolation, it is Vani’s. Vairum becomes visibly depressed each month, skipping meals, becoming curt with the rest of the family.
A week later, Saradha arrives in preparation for the delivery of her first child. A woman normally goes to her mother’s house, to be looked after in the comfort of the home she has known, but Thangam is setting up house in yet another part of the presidency and is in no position to pamper Saradha as she deserves. In any case, Sivakami has come to be called Amma, “mother,” by the children, who refer to their mother as Akka, “big sister.” Sivakami is not sure when this started or whether she should do something about it, but it does reflect the children’s reality at least in part. So Saradha comes to her amma’s, at seven months, for her bangle ceremony, and now, to deliver.
The day arrives, and Sivakami sends Muchami to fetch the old women who deliver babies, but, when they arrive, she and Sivakami stop short at Saradha’s look of panic. “No, Amma!” she says, gripping Sivakami’s arm, which shocks Sivakami as much as anything. Even as a small child, Saradha never violated her grandmother’s madi.
“What is it, kannama?”
“You have to deliver my baby, Amma. You have kai raasi. Just like you delivered me and my brothers and sisters. You have to do it, Amma. Please, Amma!”
Kai raasi: lucky hands. Sivakami feels like Saradha has tied them. She is scared of her own inexperience, but superstition scares her more: after Thangam had her first, Sivakami would not turn the job over to anyone else, and now it appears she may have to do the same for her granddaughter. Now that Saradha has said the words, kai raasi, it would be bad luck to say no.
The old women hang back-they will not put themselves forward now even though they all feel they have kai raasi. Sivakami has only delivered seven babies, while they have delivered hundreds, but it’s true that Thangam’s babies all lived-thrived, in fact, despite their sickly mother and the uncertainty and strangeness of their vagrant early lives. Sivakami must once more perform her magic.
Any magician will tell you, though, that magic is nine-tenths labour and one-tenth luck. After nine hours of labour, Sivakami is praying for an hour of luck. She instructs Visalam to dribble some boiled rice water between Saradha’s dry lips. Saradha has permitted the old women to sop the sweat from her thick eyebrows, but only Sivakami is allowed to massage the spasming abdomen with sesame oil. Saradha’s forearms, as she bears down, squatting, are locked in Sivakami’s, and she will be persuaded to release them only because Sivakami needs her hands to catch the baby, whose head has finally, fuzzily, shown. The lucky hour has arrived.
A girl! She’s small but screams at a pitch that would be admirable in a child twice her size. Saradha, relieved, whispers, “Kai raasi, Amma. You should never deviate from tradition. You have always birthed the babies in this house.”
All the old women say as much and more to their families when escorted home that night. “Will she do the same for her son and daughter-in-law, do you think?” they whisper. “When?”
Sivakami is thinking the same thing. Vani has begun to do a daily puja for a dark-barked tree a furlong northwest of the house, on one of whose branches she has tied a pink ribbon, circling the tree nine times each morning. She has poured milk down every snake hole in the vicinity-Muchami would inform her whenever he spied one and she would journey out with one of Thangam’s children carrying the milk jug. (Presumably, if the snake didn’t drown in her generosity, it would be so grateful as to wish a child on her.) She has pledged a pair of little golden feet for the altar of the Krishna temple- Krishna is often worshipped in the form of a baby, chubby, sunny, mischievous-on condition of her pregnancy and safe delivery of a child.
Vairum never demonstrates blame toward his wife. Does he blame himself? He is a math genius and this is the simplest of equations: one plus one equals three.
And, daily, he is taunted by the evidence of his sister and brother-in-law’s proficiency in this regard. His actions, in the main, have been gracious toward his nieces and nephew. He is not by any means affectionate with them, but it is clear he will do whatever he can to ensure their current and future material well-being. For instance, tutoring Laddu. He says he is doing this for Thangam: he said he would never take from her but only give, and if he doesn’t offer this instruction, this boy will forever be a burden on his mother, causing Vairum indirectly to rob her. Having said that, the instruction does little to lessen this probability. Laddu attends his uncle’s tutorials out of fear, opening his school books and staring at them in bewilderment as Vairum prods and ridicules him for an hour and a half.
Laddu’s attitude toward his thrice-weekly Sanskrit tutorials is different. The first day his school chums attend, he does too, clearly intending that the time be spent in ribbing and chortling. This turns out to be more difficult than it is in school, where they have the cover of serious students, and because Laddu’s companions refuse to misbehave in the home of the most respected widow on their street.
Laddu does not appear for the next session and Sivakami sends Muchami out to track him down. He finds the boy lying within a rough circle of smooth, large stones, the remains of a Jain monastery abandoned eight hundred years earlier but still outlined in stone dots and dashes like a telegraph from history. For generations, this has been one of those places where boys go to smoke and brag, boys with and boys without promising futures. Muchami knows the place well; he was never interested in smoking or bragging, but he was interested in boys and so was a regular.
“What is this?” Muchami begins haranguing Laddu from five yards away, and the boy jumps up guiltily. “How is it possible that there are four boys learning Sanskrit in your uncle’s house and you are not one of them? Are those boys smarter than you, that they can find your house and you got lost in the forest? Maybe we should send you to school with a string tied around your waist and pull you home like a flapping fish when classes are over, shouldn’t we? Can’t you feel how your grandmother is suffering? She has brought all the knowledge of the village into your home and your portion is going to waste. She would give you everything, but she cannot afford to waste, not food, not clothes, not knowledge. It will rot there and smell bad and be thrown to the dogs in the street who will eat it and be fat and then maybe get sick, too! See how you are hurting your grandmother and all the creatures of the world by not following your dharma? Move! Back to the house! Look smart!”
Laddu doesn’t look smart at all but does move fast. The tutorial has already begun, young Kesavan reciting noun inflections in a mesmerizing singsong, and his glazed-looking students singing each phrase back at him, “Ramaha Ramow Ramaaha, Ramam Ramow Ramaaha…” Laddu starts singing along while still in the courtyard and bursts over the threshold, expecting to garner a laugh on his entrance. No one even looks at him, and he creeps to a place on the floor, farthest from the tutor.
So now there are four boys learning Sanskrit. Or…?
Sivakami, peeping in to check on the group’s progress, notices Muchami, sitting in one of the doorways to the garden, agape at the proceedings. No sounds issue from him, but his lips are moving and he is hanging on each syllable as though it contains the mysteries of birth, death and cinema. Seeing him sit so wholly absorbed in the vicarious act of learning, Sivakami recalls one of her earliest impressions of him, that he aspires to be something more than most of his class. She recalls her own hope that she might assist him in realizing this aspiration. She already has-he is, at forty-two, among the most highly respected members of his caste. But here is a skill none of them has, something even she does not possess and never will, because she hasn’t time nor would she consider it decorous. But now that Vairum has taken over much of the management of the property, and Sita has entered school, Muchami has more free time, and why shouldn’t he consider some self-improvement?
The next day, Sivakami tells him to make a new slate and purchase some more chalk.
“Ayoh,” he sighs. “Has Laddu lost or broken yet another slate? Honestly, I…”
“No, Muchami, it’s for you,” Sivakami says proudly, glancing at Mari, who is washing the vessels following the mid-morning meal, squatting in the courtyard and scrubbing the pots with soap-nut powder and a puff of coconut coir, splashing them with water from the well.
“What will I do with it?” he asks, understandably confused. Mari, having overheard Sivakami conferring with young Kesavan, starts to grin.
“As long as you are chasing Laddu and making him attend the Sanskrit tutorial, you may as well attend it yourself,” Sivakami replies with mock gruffness. “I’m adding it to your responsibilities.”
Muchami feels his mouth shape into a silent “o,” much in the way he has tried, silently, to mouth the syllables of Sanskrit. He feels dismayed, as can happen when we receive something for which we did not dare hope. He is not a person who has spent time in self-definition. He is too busy, his personality too strong. It would have been a waste of his time. Now, though he would never describe it thus, his self-image is undergoing a jolt.
He is a member of what was once a warrior caste. His ancestors may have defended kings in a time before memory, which in their community is limited to a lifetime. Now their lot is with agriculture and service. They are a proud caste and, when serving, they serve fiercely. There are members of the generation after Muchami’s who attend school-those young relatives of his who were Vairum’s schoolyard defenders, for instance. One or two of his own generation may have done so, never for more than a few years. He didn’t attend. It didn’t matter.
He has altered as a result of his life in Sivakami’s household, from the time he subtly adopted Hanumarathnam’s Brahminical gait and manner. He has been further changed by his marriage to a woman who succeeds in observing Brahmin custom and prejudice more rigorously than most Brahmins-elevated, in Muchami and Mari’s opinion; estranged, in that of their families.
And now he is to sit with the children of the scholarly caste and repeat with them the sacred phrases of the ancient language, the language of the distinguished, the learned. Was it even permissible?
“Young Kesavan thought it a terrific idea,” Sivakami reassures him.
Is Muchami trembling?
Kesavan would think it a terrific idea: he is a progressive and positively delights in the idea of teaching Sanskrit to a servant in a Brahmin household. What hasn’t occurred to him, or to Sivakami, is that were Muchami to learn to read and write Tamil, he would be well qualified for some other job. He would have choice and mobility. Sanskrit, on the other hand, qualifies him for nothing.
Filled with a cautious, unfamiliar joy, Muchami finds a scrap of board, paints it black, leans it on the back of his hut, checks to make sure it’s drying smooth and gives it another coat the next day.
“Cha, chha, ja, jha, gna.”
“Cha, cha, cha, cha, gna.”
Laddu and his buddies suppress giggles as Kesavan turns to the garden door to address his newest student.
“Muchami. Try again. Cha, chha, ja, jha, gna.”
“Cha, cha, cha…”
“No, Muchami, listen. Chha.” Kesavan’s voice betrays impatience. His other students are not nearly so interested, but they can, at least, pronounce the syllables of this language they are purporting to learn.
Muchami’s brow is knit. “Cha,” he chokes out hesitantly.
“Oh, never mind.”
They move on to the next group of phonemes.
Muchami leaves his first class as dejected as he has ever been. He can hear that these syllables are distinct. But how to make them? He has no idea. How could it be as hard as this if children are doing it every day? Muchami speaks a different Tamil from the Brahmins’-one without Sanskrit inflections and terms. His tongue has not been accustomed to forming these sounds, which the sniggering boys have been instructed to use from birth, for words as common as “cooked rice” and “banana,” items for which he has either another word entirely or another pronunciation.
His inability puzzles him-he is, as he well knows, among the most perceptive men in the village, no caste barred. He is a magnet for information and he knows how to use it. These sounds, though, and the words formed from them, they seem to have no place to roost in his head. They fly at him like frantic pigeons. They make him panic. He tries to retain them but feels them flutter off.
Each of those first few days, Sivakami eagerly inquires what it’s like, to take a class. She expects his usual entertaining accounts, full of mimicry and insight. But all he says is, “It’s good! Good! The teacher is very good, smart boy. Could I have more sambar?”
How to say he has never learned a thing in a classroom and can’t figure out how to do so?
Mari does not ask him questions about his lessons. She flashes through her daily chores with defensive pride, and when Gayatri jokes that now it is not only Mari who is more Brahmin than the Brahmins, but her husband as well, Mari’s pride shrills fiercer still, daring anyone to prevent this.
As THE FIFTH YEAR OF VANI’S RESIDENCE in their home drizzles to a close, Sivakami feels pressure to perform some greater supplication on her son’s behalf than the pujas she has done daily for the Ramar. She resolves on commissioning a dramatization of the Ramayana, the story of Rama’s life and deeds. Vairum finds out for her which troupe in the region has the best reputation for flair and piety and writes a letter of request on her behalf. The troupe writes back; the dates and price are confirmed; she places their response at the feet of the four stone figures who govern her home and begs them again, be pleased with her and this re-enactment of their trials and victories. Send me a grandchild, one who will belong to this house and to you. The house drums around her with the noises of all those grandchildren who don’t belong, welcome as they are.
Now, two days before Sivakami’s dedicated Ramayana dramatization is to commence, Muchami brings unwelcome intelligence: another Ramayana will be performed in the village at the same time as hers, a different version.
Sivakami straightens from bending over a vat of oil, where eight vadais bounce and bubble. “Another Ramayana?” she repeats after him. “There are two Ramayanas: one written by Valmiki and one by Kamban, one Sanskrit and one Tamil, but they are one and the same. There is no… what did you call this?”
“It’s called the Self-Respect Movement, Amma. They call this the ‘Self-Respect Ramayana,’” Muchami reiterates shamefacedly. “I have heard it’s a version where Ravana is, well… ahem, the hero.”
Sivakami grimly squats and plunges the tongs amid the vadais to make them flip. Visalam squats beside her, patting vadai dough into sticky dumplings on a round, oil-blackened board, pressing her lips together and looking down, to keep herself from laughing.
“Will people go to see this, this… spectacle?” Sivakami demands. She lifts the crisped vadais from the vat and drops them into a vessel of yogourt, using her sari to wipe sweat from her upper lip and the corners of her eyes. Visalam slides a half-dozen more raw vadais into the pan, where they sink, begin to emit streams of bubbles and rise. Visalam starts to giggle, and when Sivakami asks, “What?” points to the pan.
“Please, Sivakamikka,” Gayatri says from the main hall, blowing on her coffee. “Don’t be discouraged.”
“Who is discouraged by these dirty, low types? Will Rama and Sita pay attention to these Brahmin-haters?” She stops herself from saying aloud the rest of her thoughts. Would my husband have gone to the “other” Ramayana? He used to go with them, the ones who said there is no caste. Did they say “Long live Ravana”? What appeal is there in a topsy-turvy world?
“I’m sure I don’t know, Amma,” Muchami solemnly replies, and Sivakami realizes she may have spoken her last question aloud, though sometimes, with Muchami, it doesn’t seem she has to.
Visalam has patted out two more batches of vadais.
“Go,” Sivakami tells her. “The kitchen is too hot.”
The girl springs out to the courtyard and douses herself with well water, guffawing with delight.
The performance troupe Sivakami invited is setting up a stage in a mango grove about two hundred paces east along the cart track that leads from the southern exit of the Brahmin quarter. A number of children lucky or devious enough to have escaped work or school are goggling at the performers, who, even without makeup or costume, display a high theatricality of bearing. Several tease the children and make them shriek with gorgeous terror.
A mile directly east of Sivakami’s back door, beyond the canal and the tracks, another stage and canopy are being erected, by performers physically indistinguishable from the first group in any significant way, though Sivakami’s supporters will claim they are crude in looks and comportment. Even if they hadn’t been so congenitally, the supporters splutter, they would have become so as a result of their crude tampering. How dare they touch the untouchable, alter the unalterable? The Ramayana is a foundation stone, a touchstone, a hero stone inscribed with the glorious events of some bygone day so they may never be erased nor forgotten, nor changed.
It’s probably coincidence that the interloping troupe has come to play in the same week as Sivakami’s scheduled performance, but both sides claim it’s deliberate. The performers Sivakami hired are silent in the face of all political questions, while the other troupe and its citified supporters proclaim their mandate loud and proud:
“While Rama is seen by the ignorant Brahmin-followers to be a valiant hero, we will show him to be a cowardly schemer!
“While the ignorant Brahmins and the uneducated masses they have duped see Ravana as a licentious demon, we will show him to be an honourable man, taking no more-and no less-revenge than he must to vouchsafe his reputation!
“While the ignorant and the duped exhort their young virgins to uphold Sita as the model of virtuous womanhood, taking no initiative, living by the word of her husband, as instructed in that vile manual, The Laws According to Manu, this drama will expose her as the wanton and lusty strumpet she really was!”
The most skilled of the criers explain and extemporize; the least skilled recite, halting but loud, from block-printed, hand-sewn booklets. They thrust their manifesto into the hands of numberless unlettered villagers, cajoling, mocking, seducing them into attending. They roam and comb every caste neighbourhood, except the Brahmins’, where they dump piles of the pamphlets at each exit.
In the hands of any other caste member, the pamphlets look like invitations. Littering the Brahmin quarter, they look like warnings. The wind blows them through the street, plastering them against the red and white stripes of the verandas. Some blow up beyond the reach of indignant reactionaries gathering them to thrust in their fires; some blow into eavestroughs and the little space between roof and walls. Perhaps they will be forgotten there for seasons on end and then discovered by an inquisitive grandchild in a time when all such conflicts are obsolete.
“Come one, come all!” the pamphleteer politicos scream.
Understand how the stinking Aryans flooded our Tamil country from the north with their weapons and their myths of our inferiority. Come and we will reveal what the Brahmins really mean when they say “all the monkeys of the southern country welcomed Rama and pledged their services to him. ” What do you think, noble citizens? These Brahmins see us real Tamilians as monkeys! And devils! Who is this Rama who is so celebrated for overcoming the rightful ruler to the “monkey” throne by devious means and waging war on the “devils ”? Ravana might have been a king from any of our luminous dynasties: any regal Pallava, valiant Pandyan, noble Chola, or high born Chera, who once ruled and battled and upheld our Tamil pride. Are we so stupid that we will continue to accept these distortions?
“Invaders out! Down with Brahmin raj! The day of the elite has ended! They don’t respect us-we have Self-Respect! Long live the real Tamil people!”
Tonight, the seven-night-long performances commence. Which will draw the larger crowd?
Vairum overhears men taking bets at the Kulithalai Club, when he goes to play tennis. Manifold factors weight the odds. As with bhajans or big temple events, only a small proportion of audience members attend Ramayana recitals or dramatizations out of religious devotion. Most come for entertainment, but devotion and diversion usually need not be separated. Tonight, the townsfolk face a strange choice: should they or should they not go to the new Ramayana, which, as a novelty, is a much surer source of entertainment than the smooth and well-worn passages and postures of the classical presentation? Will it be blasphemous? Worse, disrespectful?
And there are other concerns: Will there be violence? Riots? What does this performance signify?
The members of Minister’s political salon have, as always, an irreconcilable variety of opinions on the matter.
“It’s an insult and an affront,” foams Dr. Kittu Iyer, “and quite wholly unnecessary and-”
“False.” Mani Iyer interrupts, agreeing emphatically with the older Brahmin man. “It’s all lies.”
Vairum, since returning to Cholapatti, has been a regular attendee at the salon, though he doesn’t come daily, because he is too busy with his work and because he prefers to maintain a slight distance from these men who are nonetheless useful to him.
“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 mill: 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.”
Muchami reliably gives a much more satisfying account, taking nearly an hour to describe the costumes and mimic the highlights of the evening. Gayatri, who had attended, claims she is entertained all over again by Muchami’s show, but also assures Sivakami, “It’s first-class performance, Sivakamikka, take it from me.” She repeats, with emphasis, the English phrase that has passed confidently into bourgeois Tamil. “First-class.”
Muchami also, however, brings the unwelcome wisdom that nine-year-old Laddu, who had been given permission to attend, was spotted at the wrong tent. Sivakami mentions this to Vairum, who catches Laddu up by one arm from the corner where he is napping and delivers a brief but thorough thrashing.
“You were given permission to attend the performance your grandmother sponsored. You were not given time and freedom to do whatever you want. As long as you live under this roof, you will abide by what you are told. Clear?”
Laddu drops back onto the floor, sobbing.
The next day, Sivakami doesn’t bother asking Vairum for his report but rather waits for Muchami’s, which he delivers with all the enthusiasm and verve of the days prior, though he omits one detail. Gayatri notes this omission and says nothing: Vairum was seen once more under the canvas roof of the other troupe’s performance tent.
“You all have enjoyed terrific success,” Dr. Kittu Iyer says stiffly, in a rare acknowledgement, that same morning. The night before, that of the third performance, Self-Respect’s audience equalled Sivakami’s. “With the kinds of concessions the Justice Party has achieved for the non-Brahmin sector, one can’t help but see a time when very few Brahmins would want to live in Tamil Nadu,” he mumbles tangentially. “Opportunities are becoming scarce for us.”
“Oh, pshaw!” Ranga Chettiar ejects. “The presidency’s Brahmins have had their rampant nepotism but slightly curtailed. This hardly heralds your starvation, my good fellow!”
“Well may we all starve if our country is run by an administration chock full of fellows whose ICS examination scores are deplorably below par.” Mani Iyer trembles indignantly.
“Yes, none of you fellows has been able to satisfactorily explain the continued inadequacy of performance by non-Brahmin castes on all academic and standardized measures,” Dr. Kittu Iyer accuses. “And these reserved positions in colleges and the government can hardly offer much motivation to improve.”
“Oh, come now.” Rama Sastri, the lawyer, waves an orangewood stick at them and goes back to his cuticles. “All of your nephews and cousins and the brothers of your sons-in-law have profited from your acquaintance with our host. This is why you have so consistently returned him to office.”
The remark is all too accurate, but none of them needs to be reminded. Minister, as their host and the subject of this most awkward moment, grasps for a remark which will smooth it.
“I’m sorry,” the Sastri smirks. “That was tacky.”
Young Kesavan, the Sanskrit master, attending for a second day, rises, stretches and yawns. “I agree that the administration is far too Brahminically weighted. It’s not healthy for our future. But I, too, wish that non-Brahmin lobby groups could put the energy into self-improvement that they have invested in divisiveness and political manoeuvring.”
“I… I think,” Minister begins, “I know you all have real evidence of my esteem for you and your families. You have been my constituency and will remain so. What benefit could I expect if I didn’t return your trust?”
“You are a beacon, Minister,” Muthu Reddiar rejoins with hearty ambiguity. “We are all looking to you in this difficult time.”
“I have been waiting for that boy, that traitor-where is Vairum today?” Dr. Kittu Iyer springs to his feet, then looks a little dizzy. “You all have heard that he is now attending this Self-Respect whatever-it-is-called ?” he spits.
Minister had not heard this and becomes grave. “I… he must have business in Trichy today. Are you quite sure? He didn’t attend the performance his mother sponsored for him?”
His cronies shake their heads, not sure whether they are glad or regretful to be delivering him this news.
At 3:30, Minister descends to eat his tiffin. Exiting the stairwell, he padlocks the door behind him. It’s only mid-afternoon, but with alien elements about the village, it’s best not to take chances. Crossing the veranda, he steps into the narrow hallway that opens into the great hall and pauses to let his eyes adjust to the dimness.
He’s sleepy. He’s been attending only the first portion of the performance each night, just long enough to show his support for Sivakami. Even this brief appearance, however, has meant he gets to bed later than usual. And the daily salon inevitably leaves him too stimulated to manage an afternoon rest.
Gayatri smiles at him and shoos the children from the dining room as he sits. She lays a banana leaf on the floor in front of him and goes to the kitchen to fetch a serving vessel full of freshly steamed idlis. She puts five on the leaf and returns to the kitchen for okra sambar. The oily crescent moons beneath her eyes are darker than usual-it’s been a busy week and she can’t get to sleep at night until her husband comes home.
“How is Sivakami Mami?” he commences.
“Resigned. We didn’t even speak of the other Ramayana today. Muchami gives such an entertaining-”
“Vairum has been seen at that other Ramayana.”
This is not a revelation to Gayatri. “He punished his nephew for the same transgression,” she says, though she is aware, on a level she can’t articulate, that it is not the same transgression at all. “Are you going to say something to Vairum?”
“I don’t understand his motives!” He shakes his head. “Does Sivakami Mami know he’s been seen there?”
“I would hope no one would dare tell her.” Gayatri stands to accept the baby from her mother-in-law.
“This is how big St. Joseph ’s College graduates behave?” Minister jabs the air with his eating hand, scattering beads of okra, then jabs again at his food. “What can he be thinking? He’s not a child.”
“No, yes.” Gayatri jiggles the baby vigorously on her hip. “Maybe he needs a child of his own before he feels that.”
“Hm,” Minister grunts.
“He won’t say it, but I think he thinks Cholapatti Brahmins don’t accept him,” Gayatri ventures.
“They don’t,” Minister responds pragmatically. “So what?”
“So maybe this is a kind of revenge.”
“But no one cares but his mother!” Minister expostulates. “All he will do is give food for gossip and wound her.”
Gayatri murmurs agreement, because if she didn’t, she would have to suspect that Vairum may see this all too well, that his attendance is not a youthful caprice, nor a gesture of ignorance or naivete, and Gayatri, while she is shrewd, can’t think that way about a boy she likes.
The next day, when Vairum arrives in the salon, after the other members, Minister shouts at him. “What do you think you are doing? What about your mother?”
“My mother belongs to an old order,” Vairum responds evenly. “I am interested in a new one.”
The salon is astounded. Vairum has never expressed an opinion before and they, with the exception of Rama Sastri, realize now that they have been a little afraid to find out where he stands.
“You… you are worshipping Ravana?” asks Dr. Kittu Iyer, too shocked to reprimand him.
“No-neither of these Ramayanas is an act of worship. My mother’s is supplication. The other is a political statement.” Vairum accepts a cup of tea and a biscuit from a maid. “I worship the gods of my home in my home, every morning and night. I ask them, too, for the blessing of a child, but I will worship them no matter what they choose to give me in my life. I have been fortunate in most respects, so far. And I am interested in witnessing what all these Self-Respecters have to say.”
Rama Sastri takes him up. “Come now, Vairum: you know very well you are making a political statement by attending one and not the other.”
“Fair enough. By that reasoning, staying home would also be a political statement.” Vairum watches the men watching him hold his own. “These are political times. The Self-Respecters offer an amusing spectacle. And they have a good point: the caste system is unfair.”
Murthy, returning from a trip to the outhouse, hollers from the door. “I have been waiting for you! How could you betray your mother and your people in this fashion?” he berates Vairum in Tamil.
Although most of the other salon members would have said the same thing, they find Murthy somewhat distasteful and hearing him speak their thoughts makes them wish, a little, to take some other side.
“Your father was like a brother to me and I am as a father to you. I forbid you to return. You will attend the real Ramayana from tonight forward, yes? Good boy.”
Vairum gives his father’s cousin a hard look, shrewd and not unaffectionate. “I am not as confident as you of how my father would have advised me in this situation. But I have my reasons, and I will attend the performance of my choice. Excuse me.”
Vairum rises and departs the salon before Murthy has a chance to react. Several seconds later, though, Murthy toddles stiffly down the stairs to give chase. He sees Vairum heading toward their houses at the other end of the Brahmin quarter and scurries after his swiftly striding form. At the end of the street, however, Vairum doesn’t go into his house but continues on as the road turns left-toward town, toward the river, who knows. Murthy stops, panting, at his own veranda, the other salon members looking on, down the street, from Minister’s door.
The next morning, Vairum comes back to the salon and, as always, peruses the newspapers, not speaking because he is not spoken to. Murthy is not in attendance, and the others hash things out among themselves. In a lull, Gopi Chettiar, who is also more observer than participant, asks Vairum’s opinion on a newly formed cereals-processing unit going up in Thiruchi.
“It will do well. I have invested,” Vairum responds, his fingertips joined, so his hands form a loose cage at his mouth.
The men are clearly surprised.
“Ah,” Gopi Chettiar clears his throat nervously. “They asked me… ”
“Get in now,” nods Vairum. “It will soon get expensive.”
“While we’re on the subject of investment,” Muthu Reddiar breaks in, smiling, “I wanted to let you know, Vairum-well, let all of you know,” he expands graciously, “my man, the Sikh, has telegraphed me that our shipment of Australian horses has arrived in Madras harbour. I wanted to thank you for your support in this project, Vairum. They are evidently sturdier than our Indian breeds, and the stallions should stud nicely with my line of carriage horses.”
“Glad to know it,” Vairum says, poker-faced. “Clearly a winning proposal.”
Minister is taken aback. Business matters are often referred to in the salon, since they are inseparable from the workings of politics and power, but this discussion verges uncomfortably on transaction. He thinks, though, that he may now understand how Vairum has been benefiting from these years in attendance. Now he quickly starts to feel pride in having drawn the boy in: Minister’s not a minister at present, his political fortunes may be at a low ebb, but he is still an influence peddler. The boy knows which way the wind is blowing, Minister thinks. And he is my friend.
Vairum catches his eye and they exchange a slight smile.
The morning after the sixth performance, Rama Sastri treats them to a recitation of the concluding stanzas of each of the performances. Both showed the episode in which Ravana is slain in battle by Rama. The Sastri has sent his reluctant servant to the performance each night, and the man has turned out to be an excellent reporter.
“This is our performance, close to Kamban’s words, if not quite,” says the Sastri, clearing his throat and proclaiming:
“With Ravana’s death, the fceld grows still
At such long last, the end.
Sita and Rama, reunited with dignity,
Paid respects by each foe, each friend.
And this is theirs-rather innovative,“ he smiles, shifting position, dropping his right hand and lifting his left:
“Ravana’s noble head and body
Rejoined on the funeral pyre.
Dravidian pride and sorrow now
But battlefield’s bloody mire.
The flames of truth and purity
Must in your eyes leap higher.
Ravana’s children! Avenge this death!
Unite in the name ofyour sire!
Loose the blindfold of Aryan deception,
Every Shastri, lyengar, Iyer
Is a manufacturer of illusions
Yet these are the ones you hire
For your weddings, your blessings, your babies and homes
Whether you be Panchama or Nair
Self Respect, man! Do it yourself!
Beneath Ravana’s flag: the lyre!“
The Sastri concludes with a flourish.
“It’s not a lyre, it’s a veena,” Dr. Kittu Iyer snorts.
“Poetic licence, dear chap,” Rama Sastri responds.
“You can only take poetic licence with poetry,” the doctor explodes. “This is drivel.”
“Does anyone know why the so-called Self-Respecters ended one night early?” Mani Iyer deepens his ever-present brow wrinkles. “Surely not to actually enable the populace to celebrate Rama’s return and recoronation in peace.”
“Surely not.” Muthu Reddiar strokes his upwardly waxed moustaches. “I passed their tent on my way here-they’re readying for performance, not packing up.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” remarks Minister, and the others frown in agreement or perplexity.
“My foot!” Murthy, who had held his tongue till then, screams in English. He has leapt up, fists and eyes clenched, face flushing from pomegranate to mangosteen. “Day after day this talktalktalk and no action. These fellows cannot fling about insults and expect best citizens would accept simply! Though they must think so because of you!” he spits at Vairum, who looks away, mild and skeptical.
“Have you… a… proposal?” Minister asks, though his tone makes it sound more like “Sit down… you’re… embarrassing yourself.”
“Yes!” Murthy cries, returning to his native tongue, ablaze with inspiration. There is a patch of dirty grey stubble on his dewlap, missed while shaving. It wobbles at the men as he reveals his idea. “I will lie down! I will lie across the path that these asses of the audience must take to attend the debacle, and prevent them from entering.”
“Bravo!” Rama Sastri starts to clap. “Take a stand, man-lying down! The show must not go on!”
Murthy heaves for the door, muttering and crying, “Must not go on, the show!”
“The peasants will never step over him,” Mani Iyer offers.
“No-they will go around him,” says Ranga Chettiar with exasperation.
Minister tries to intervene. “Please, dear man. Don’t be rash”-and he grabs for Murthy’s hand, but it is slippery and Murthy, inflamed by his vision, descends the stairs.
“Well, thank God that’s taken care of,” snorts Muthurunga Chettiar, half-reclined on a divan.
After some moments, Minister speaks. “I shan’t let him go to that place, alone-I shall try again, this evening, to dissuade him, and if he won’t be dissuaded, I will follow him. He is my good friend, like all of you, one of my constituency, and I owe him a debt of good faith.”
There follows a silence in which it seems several of the men mean to speak and change their minds. Rama Sastri finally breaks it.
“Ah-I had thoughts of slinking over there myself. Curiosity, don’t you know, the last night. Theatre is hardly theatre when performed by my man.”
“I am not curious-I am interested by this message of non-Brahmin uplift,” declares Ranga Chettiar.
“Tsk, let us join!” Muthu Reddiar waves dismissively. “It’s a spectacle!”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Gopi Chettiar offers in response to Ranga Chettiar’s expectant look.
“We are not to be outnumbered,” Dr. Kittu Iyer says with stiff and evident reluctance. “There may be those still amenable to the Congress message. ”
“Quite,” whimpers Mani Iyer. “Oh, quite.”
Vairum clears his throat. “I’ll see you all there, then.” He smiles, templing his fingers, lowers his head and can’t help starting to chuckle, then laugh. Rama Sastri joins in, and then Minister, and the Reddiar. The others are not so compelled but smile perplexedly at their solidarity. It seems almost fated.
“Ho, ho, what is this?” the actor playing Rama exclaims jocularly.
“Hoi! Jambu, Bala, come, quickly! See what I have found!”
Ordinarily, Murthy would bow before an actor dressed as Rama, but this is not a Rama he recognizes: painted-on leer, unimpressive profile, sloppy clothes. Rage and hurt start to pump him full again with bravado. Anyway, he can’t bow: he’s flat on his back.
Two more heads bend over him: Lakshmana and Sita, they can be none else, but, again, what perversions!
“Brahmin,” says Lakshmana with glee, drawing a line from his own shoulder to hip to indicate the holy thread visible beneath Murthy’s rumpled kurta.
“What do you want?” Sita demands. Stubble pokes through “her” rice flour face powder and kohl beauty marks.
“The show,” Murthy squeaks, “must not go on!”
Rama turns to the others incredulously and Lakshmana starts a high-pitched giggle.
“Oh, come, let us get ready.” Sita turns away. “Leave him until big boss comes and we have an audience.”
“We have an audience!” Lakshmana jumps up and down a few times at Murthy’s head, to make him wince, then follows the others.
Murthy can tell from their nasal voices and funny gaits that they are comic actors-what sort of Ramayana features comic actors in the lead roles? What was the English expression Minister Iyer was using, some months back… cave of inequity? Lair of inquiety? It means something very sinful. He was talking about opium smokers in Calcutta: white people, women. Shocking. Murthy sighs and looks at his hands, folded on his chest, chubby fingers and stubby nails, and up again at the sky. It’s still blue, though each cloud blares orange off its western slope, heralding the dusk. He hears voices from around a bend in the path and tightens his bearing so he looks like a toy soldier at attention-knocked down.
“Ayoh! Enn’ idhu?” It’s a woman’s voice, accompanied by running feet. A family group looks down on him.
“Who is it?”
“An Iyer!”
“Is the Iyer hurt? Does he need assistance?”
They do not make eye contact with him, and stand at a respectful and non-polluting distance, slightly bowed, rigid.
“No, you silly people, the Iyer doesn’t need help,” Murthy bellows. “As long as he knows you dolts are not participating in this scandalous and disrespectful so-called Ramayana, he will be fine.” He returns his attention to the sky.
A crowd has dribbled in behind the first family. As they grasp Murthy’s intentions, some begin to look guilty. Others begin to smile behind raised hands. Yet others appear worried. None, however, passes him by and the crowd grows as fast and thick as the darkness, bottlenecking some four feet from Murthy’s prone form. A continual murmuring passes the message back and along.
A familiar voice rings out above the hum-Rama Sastri. “By Jove, it’s working!”
Murthy straightens still further. The next voice, Dr. Kittu Iyer, sounds pleased and pompous. “Well done. Well done, I say. Move aside! Step aside, here. At once!”
In the instant before they achieve the front of the crowd, however, something transpires to Murthy’s other side.
Rama! Sita! Lakshmana! Hanuman! Each springs from the bushes and takes his pose until they form a grotesque caricature of the classic formation, the very one that graces Sivakami’s main hall. Murthy is lying at their feet. As one, they glance down and their faces light up with exaggerated pleasure. They present Murthy to the crowd with a sweeping gesture, as though his is one more body on the battlefield of Lanka, and a great cheer rises up. Minister and the members of his salon emerge and break this sound bubble; at their appearance, a nervous hush falls like soap film upon the masses.
Now another shout is heard from behind the crowd, and all turn and crane to see: it is Ravana-tall, handsome, noble-looking, as he would not be in the conventional Ramayana-who at the end of the previous performance was borne away, cold and ashen, on a funeral bier. Now he brandishes a sword atop a silk-jacketed steed, which capers and snorts as vigorously as his master.
“He lives!” shouts the shrimpy Rama, and cowers, the heel of his hand pressed to his mouth. Lakshmana hides behind his brother; Sita bats her eyelashes at her former captor; Hanuman, a large-cheeked fellow with a tail, yawns and scratches.
Vairum approaches through a group of not only lower-caste labourers, but Panchamas (as untouchables are coming to be called), Christians, even Muslims, though each sub-group has clustered and holds itself subtly apart from the others.
“He lives! He lives! He lives!” The chant begins in the crowd.
But which crowd? For Ravana not only faces a crowd but leads one. Which is composed of… strangers. Vairum will later learn that the 05:40 Thiruchi local pulled in and deposited them-mostly young, many urban, some from as far away as Madras, all chanting Self-Respect slogans-on the Kulithalai platform, where this Ravana had met them.
The local crowd pulls back to form a ring with more of their own numbers, who have continued to appear at the rear of Ravana’s guard. Murthy has not moved, though he lifts his head and strains to see.
“How charming,” sneers Ravana, and suddenly turns his horse’s flank toward the salon members and sweeps his sword downward. The sun reflects red off the blade and they cringe into one another. “Nay, how convenient. The Brahmins and Brahmin-lovers have come to us.” Ravana looks beyond them, toward the tent, and they turn, also, to see the rest of the cast-some twenty actors-assembled behind Rama.
“Gentlemen,” Ravana booms. “The moment of justice’s proof has arrived!” Three of the actors take hold of Rama, Sita and Lakshmana, three others snap them into leg irons. In the same moment, Minister’s arms are pulled roughly back and his wrists tied. He looks back wildly to see a fiendish young face with huge white teeth and snapping black eyes.
“Release me at once!” Vairum hears from Ranga Chettiar, though he can’t see exactly what is happening.
“Brute!” This is Rama Sastri. All the salon members have been apprehended, except Vairum, who is not with them.
“As a rightful and invincible monarch of the Dravidian people, I declare the trial of our oppressors, betrayers and false prophets open. Lead the prisoners to the dock!”
Ravana wheels his charge and then stops with a puzzled frown, as though he’s heard something but can’t place the source. His glance breasts the crowd and then descends to a form at his feet.
“Halt,” Vairum hears Murthy squeak.
“Naptime?” asks Ravana.
“Sabotage, my liege,” offers an actor with a gaudy band around his arm reading “bailiff.” “He thought he could prevent the audience from coming in if he lay across the path.”
Ravana dismounts with a jangle and clank-earrings, chains, bangles, belt, hilt, scabbard, anklets-and steps up to Murthy, whose features contract in fright as he draws his hands to his breast like a dog showing its belly.
“How you Aryans under-esteem us,” Ravana tut-tuts. He takes a great stride, led by an immense foot clad in a gold-embroidered, curved-toe slipper with a stamped-leather sole, across and over Murthy’s sunken chest-a gesture of magnificent disrespect. Ravana’s horse follows suit and Ravana remounts.
“On with the show!” he cries, and gallops toward the tent.
Murthy is hauled to his feet by a couple of bailiffs and dragged along with the crowd toward the tent.
The painted backdrop, which, for the last week, has displayed scenes of palaces, forests and rocky beaches-Rama’s castle was mysteriously identical to Ravana’s, down to the personnel-now provides the atmosphere of a courtroom, with a ragged St. George flapping forlornly off the same flagpole as Ravana’s flag, which stands out straight, starched with rice paste. On a podium stands a statuette, dangling scales from one hand; instead of classical Greek garb, however, the female figure is wrapped in the manner of a Tamil country tribal.
As Vairum surges forward with the crowd, he realizes that his salon-fellows are not the only detainees. There are others who must have been frog-marched in with the crowd from points distant. But-that one, with the wire-rimmed spectacles and bald head-is he supposed to be…? If he were reduced by about three stone, perhaps he could pass. And why is that other prisoner clad in the jaunty cap and buttoned-up jacket of…? But the hat is tied on with string, and that dark visage, with teeth poking out in all directions, hardly cuts the profile on which so many hearts are said to have been dashed. The men of the salon don’t look up often, but when they do, they are even more frightened to find themselves surrounded by characters whom they recognize from newspapers and books, but whose likenesses here are to those photos as the Self-Respect Ramayana is to the original. Vairum is concerned for the salon members and glad to be out in the crowd, should anything untoward happen. But until it does, he has to admit this Ramayana is far more entertaining than the other.
“And now, who is our judge?” demands Ravana of the crowd. “Who will sit in judgment on all those who, in weakness and greed, have downtrodden the rightful people of Dravida Nadu?”
“You, Ravana!” several young men chorus back. “You judge!”
Ravana blushes and fawns. “No, no, I really couldn’t.”
Uproarious laughter rises from the crowds and Ravana turns serious.
“No, I refuse to judge because I myself must be judged. I want to submit to trial along with all the others who have purported to rule and lead you. Let us put a halt to blackmail and subterfuge, and let the people judge who is to rule them!”
Cheering.
“But someone must guide and order the proceedings, at least, and for this task I propose our Mariamman, never bent nor bowed.” He kicks off his slippers and makes an elaborate prostration to the tribal goddess. All those present do the same, though the salon members must be rolled into and lifted out of the position, unable to help themselves with their hands.
Ravana settles himself on a bamboo mat. Two curvaceous young women fan him. “I declare the proceedings open,” he announces lightly.
This is the night Sivakami is to attend the Ramayana she sponsored. Muchami has minimized the degree of attrition it has suffered, so she is shocked, when she approaches the pandal, to find no more than twenty people in attendance, made up of a few neighbours, with some Kulithalai Brahmins she doesn’t know, even though the coronation of Rama has already begun. She has brought Vani, and had called for Murthy and Rukmini before leaving. Rukmini came but said it seemed her husband was already at the performance. Gayatri, sitting on her veranda with her children as they passed, said the same thing.
Now Sivakami turns to Muchami, who is following with Mari at a respectful distance. “Muchami! Where are Murthy Anna and Minister Anna?” she whispers loudly.
Muchami, miserable and mortified on her behalf, looks around. “I can’t imagine, Amma.”
Sivakami takes a place on a mat to one side of the stage and says to Vani, “I suppose Vairum was meeting some associate and will come when he’s done?”
Vani doesn’t answer. Sivakami looks at her hard and looks for Muchami again, but he has taken a place with the non-Brahmins, too far away to ask him the same question.
Back at the Self-Respect Ramayana, each of the characters is tried, one by one. Vairum, caught up in the mood of the crowd, finds the hearings eerily convincing. It never would have occurred to him to fault Rama and Sita for behaving as they do in the story, but it’s really quite arguable. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to see his gods as he did before. Perhaps this is what it means to be a Hindu in the new age. Mother and father are to be worshipped as gods, and they have their limitations, as Vairum increasingly can see. Why shouldn’t the gods, too, admit their faults?
Next, the politicians are tried: the chubby Gandhi, the buck-toothed Nehru, a host of others, found short-sighted-nay, blind; neglectful; unwilling to face their own prejudices. The crowd is in a frenzy.
Finally, the men of the salon: Brahmin and non-Brahmin but all clearly elite, marked unmistakably by their fine clothes, soft hands, softer bellies. They are given no chance to speak because they are clearly guilty, guilty, guilty.
Vairum recalls his euphoria at that long-ago courtroom victory when he won his sister her due. Here it is again, the triumph of right over might. The excitement of the crowd, unbelievably, is still mounting. Their clamour coalesces into a chant: “Parade! Parade!”
Like a snake with a belly full of squirming mice, the throng surges out along the path where, so recently, Murthy stretched his now defiled body, and heads toward the other tent.
“There’s another Brahmin!” shouts one of the hired goons. “Take him!”
Vairum is alarmed as two of the bailiffs reach for him.
“Ugh!” The one to reach him first pulls back. “Stop! Leper!”
The thugs surround Vairum but none is willing to touch him. One throws him a rope. “Tie your own wrists, leper.”
“No!” Two of Muchami’s nephews push through the crowd and shove them aside, defending Vairum against attack as they had when they were all lads in school. “He doesn’t count. He has attended every night of your Ramayana.”
“It’s lascivious curiosity, just as they like our women,” sneers the roughest-looking bailiff.
“Yeah, take advantage, but don’t take it home,” says another.
“Really, he is different. Even the Brahmins know it,” says the older nephew gently. By then, several of Vairum’s friends, who were willing to defend him but, unlike the nephews, unused to having to, have advanced with similar protests.
The mass has continued to flow around them, and now Ravana comes past on his horse, with the prisoners of the salon, roped together, trudging abjectly behind.
“What’s this, a stray?” Ravana trumpets from far above, then squints at him. “Leper?”
“They say he’s an exception, sire,” the tubby bailiff explains.
“Oh, they say so, do they?” Ravana glances from one nephew to another. “Well then, it must be so. We must trust the locals, fellows, or how will they ever trust us? Hop to, my nasties,” he calls to the salon cortege. “There’s more than one way to conquer,” he nods to the foiled vigilantes. “In making war, as in making love, you must use your head as well as your hands.”
He gallops on with a laugh and wink.
VAIRUM IS SWEPT ALONG in the crowd to “The Coronation of Rama,” the grand finale of the conventional Ramayana.
Thus it is that Sivakami witnesses her gods arrested and tried, in a monkey court where the only monkey is found innocent, and the enemy of her gods, whose painted demon face revealed little intelligence and much vanity, is surprised but gratified to find himself revered as a hero. She sees her gods and her neighbours pelted with shoes (no one should have been wearing shoes on ground that had been consecrated for the performance, she thinks-did they bring them in bags?) and thus turned into untouchables. Rama is defiled, hit with the very sandals-his own-that his younger brother had placed on the throne when the god was sent into exile.
From her vantage point, backed safely by Muchami and Mari into a corner of the clearing, along with Vani and Rukmini, Sivakami feels curiously unsurprised to see Vairum arrive with the crowd from the other Ramayana, more surprised to see Murthy and Minister arrive as prisoners.
She had been wondering whether all this was her fault, whether she attracted the other Ramayana with her extravagant gesture. Gayatri and Muchami had assured her, no, no, this could never be the case. It’s not the kind of thing she would say to Vairum. She and he make eye contact now, across the crowd, but she can’t tell what he is thinking. From her protected corner, she tries but can’t tell if he is wearing shoes, as has been his habit since Minister bought him his first pair.
Hours later, the hoopla shows no sign of abating, and in fact feels as though it might turn ugly. Muchami edges Sivakami, Rukmini, Vani and Mari along the clearing to the path and signals to Vairum to join them. Vairum says a word of farewell to a couple of friends and comes to them. He is barefooted, but as they make their way along the path, he dives for a moment into the brush and recovers his shoes.
They are all silent as they walk and Sivakami soon realizes she is the only one who can break the quiet. None of the others will speak before she or Vairum does, and Vairum never feels the need to account for his actions.
“If you didn’t want the Ramayana, I never would have commissioned it,” she says, not trying to keep the reproach out of her voice.
“I never said I didn’t want it,” he replies, aware that this doesn’t begin to explain his behaviour.
“How could you humiliate me so?” she whispers.
“I had no intention to humiliate you. My convictions are different from yours, that is all.”
It’s true that he attended the other Ramayana because he couldn’t stand to attend Sivakami’s, and yet, even as he says he didn’t mean to humiliate her, he feels the statement turning into a lie. Could he have borne his neighbours’ company for her sake? Another son might have, but what other son is subjected to all he must endure, for the sake of caste?
“I can’t stand to be a Brahmin sometimes. If you weren’t a Brahmin, you wouldn’t be in white, with your head shaved, hiding in the house, living constantly in a state of victimhood while thinking yourself better than everyone else.”
“We are better,” Sivakami says simply, bewildered. “Why are you not proud?”
“I just can’t stand it!” he roars at her, turning backward along the path to face her, and the others, arrayed behind. “That there is no escape. Can’t you… I want to see things differently sometimes!”
He stalks ahead, and they follow him home.
The next morning, he feels moody and stays in the house. As the older children leave for school, he puts a mat to one side of the main hall, where he can listen to Vani play. He lies, his elbow on a bolster, letting the music ebb around him as though he is lying in a few inches of warm ocean at the beach.
One little grandchild is creeping around the house still: Sita. She comes in from the garden but stops when she sees him, and backs away again. Unpleasant-looking child, he thinks, and then is overcome by throbbing, choking, desirous sadness. He turns back to watch his wife. Why haven’t we had a child, my love?
I killed my father, he killed his father. He doesn’t remember when he first heard the chorus in his brain, sounding as though it has murmured there since he was born. Vani, without ceasing her music, looks at him suddenly, and he, feeling her glance, looks back. Even to him she speaks little, but she can still, as she did from that first day, drown out the deathly chatter with her music and her eyes.
She completes me, he thinks, breathing shallowly with gratitude, grasping at this as though at a branch overhanging a now-swollen river, but marriage is not marriage without children.
To escape his origins; to embrace them.
I just want a baby to raise. It may be possible that I am worthy of this.