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Old Rules

By Ramesh Avadhani

Sunitha kept shooting me desperate glances. Do something, do something, they pleaded.

 
The sofas should do, says Mother, and dumps her bag of saris and blouses on one of them. The bag will be her pillow. She is like that, no fuss, ready to adjust to any situation, not like Father who went home early. I can’t sleep in strange places, he said.

The truth is he isn’t happy with the way things have gone. You gave away my daughter to a family of scoundrels, he kept telling Mother because she was the one who fixed up the match. But it didn’t matter what he said. He was retired, suffered high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes, walked in a shuffle that still made me wince, and had very little money in the bank.

~

We are in a modest wedding hall. No fancy lights, no plush carpets or curtains, even the location is a forgettable suburb of Bengaluru. Yet more than 500 relatives and friends came and blessed and dined and said: what a sweet couple, what tasty food, great wedding, when are you getting the other girl married?

Let’s see, Father said, and it was only late in life that I realized how much he hated my sisters getting married off. He loved them so much I sometimes wished I was his daughter.

Soon, Mother said to the friends and relatives.

Later we sat down to count. Plates and vessels, spoons and cups, tables and chairs. All to be returned to the shops that had hired them out to us. Then we shared the leftover coconuts and fruits, sweets and savories amongst ourselves. By the time we finished, it was well past midnight. I wanted to go home but Mother said there’s one more ritual tomorrow, you have to do it as you are the son. I should have asked what ritual, but there have been so many rituals all day long.

~

Not bad, says Uncle Venkat, bending over, pressing, testing a sofa with both hands. He is Mother’s elder brother from Chennai. Tall and frail, he can’t eat anything hard because of teeth that shake but he was the first rebel in our family of Tamil Brahmins. Thirty years back he married Mary and none from the family attended the church wedding. Grandpa declared: Venkat is dead, he’s no longer my son.

Venkat went to Hyderabad and prospered in a marketing job there. It took Grandpa five years to call him back. Grandpa, a part-time life insurance agent, celebrated by ordering small cups of Kwality’s strawberry ice-creams. Venkat reciprocated by giving a dozen or so names and phone numbers for Grandpa’s insurance prospects. Much later Grandpa discovered that none of them was interested in insurance.

You want this or this? Mary asks of the frail rebel now, holding up her hands—a folded Turkish towel, a folded cotton sari. Venkat takes the towel and Mary goes to another sofa to attend to her son, Gordon.

Gordon is 26 or 27 but bloated body and thinning hair make him look 36 or 37. Some hours back he went out for a walk and when he returned, panting, sweating, he growled at his mother: What kind of a place is this? Not a single wine store nearby.

~

Where should I sleep? asks Blind Narayan, his head jerking like a faulty radar. Mother’s younger brother, also from Chennai. He worked in the Railways before he went blind. He tightened nuts on sleepers for eight hours every day. Nutcase job, he always said. He was addicted to rum and cards but when prohibition was clamped in Chennai, he hunted out illicit liquor in dark alleys and darker slums. One morning he woke up almost dead. They rushed him to the hospital but couldn’t save his eyes.

Mother guides him to a sofa near a window. He lights up a cigarette and drawls: Now, where’s my wife hiding? His wife, Saraswati, hears that and shouts across the hall: What do you want?

Tall and plump, she is the breadwinner now. She supplies home-cooked vegetarian meals to a good number of offices in Chennai. Before Narayan went blind, he wouldn’t let her step out of the house. He said her tongue moved too much, her eyes wandered too much. Now she has to talk a lot in her business, keep a quick eye on provisions and accounts and deliveries.

She is on the dais with her meek daughter, stuffing the presents into two gunny bags, one each behind the two regal chairs where the newlyweds sat and stood, sat and stood, to receive the guests during the reception. The daughter is 14 or 15, a girl with a habit of staring fixedly and smiling suddenly, a girl who is terrified of her blind father, his unpredictable talk.

I am thinking of our Wallajah honeymoon, Narayan shouts back.

We giggle and laugh and Saraswati blushes. The story is well known, made well known by Narayan himself by narrations at several weddings like this. They married in a Krishna temple in Chennai because that was cheap and quick. Then, as there was hardly any privacy in Grandpa’s small house and since Narayan didn’t want to spend money for a hotel room, he took Saraswati to a railway workshop where a lot of coaches stood awaiting repairs. The spent couple woke up in Wallajah Road station, about two hours from Chennai.

Sunitha, my favorite sister. We were inseparable until I eloped with a Catholic girl to Mumbai.

I choose a sofa and lie down. Only then do I sense the fatigue in my limbs. I helped in laying out the chairs, in sprinkling rosewater on the guests streaming in, in distributing turmeric-coated rice for showering on the newlyweds, in handing out the traditional token of gratitude—a plastic bag containing a coconut, a banana, two betel leaves, and some areca nuts. After all, this was Sunitha’s wedding. Sunitha, my favorite sister. We were inseparable until I eloped with a Catholic girl to Mumbai. So, I became the second rebel in our family.

~

I knew, Father kept shouting at Mother, I knew that your Venkat would have an evil effect on my son. Father behaved like Grandpa; he refused to answer my letters, my phone calls. Now, this is my first visit home in three years, a visit for reconciliation, a visit for Sunitha’s wedding. I came alone. I told my wife, let’s first see how they treat me. If they don’t create a ruckus we will go together next time.

~

Kajal, my younger sister, is already curled up on a sofa, eyes shut. She will be married off soon, as Mother said. The girl has grown prettier, aloofer. Whenever her large brown eyes flick over to me and away, my chest aches. It’s as if she can’t recall having a brother. Mother tried to comfort me: She’s like that with everyone, don’t worry about it, but her comforting lacked conviction.

Someone switches off the lights and the streetlights promptly splash yellow rectangles through the windows. Blind Narayan smokes and coughs and lets loose his unpredictable talk: He must be doing it to Sunitha now.

Frail Venkat laughs and glances at the farthest corner, at the only room furnished with a bed. I look at Mother but she looks away. I want to tell her, how can Narayan talk like this about your innocent daughter, my favorite sister?

Can he do it? Venkat says with phony innocence.

Mary proves herself more Brahmin, more dignified. Shut up and sleep, she tells him.

But Narayan, so comfortable about his blindness, so unperturbed about anyone, any remark, continues: Why don’t you go with a candle and see for yourself.

This time even Mother laughs. I get off the sofa and walk to the window. A dog out on the street stands ramrod still, just its tail moving with a menacing slowness. I try not to imagine Sunitha in the room.

~

Slender and nervous Sunitha. We went to the same school. She struggled to keep pace with me to the bus stop. One afternoon I cajoled her to walk home because I wanted to buy a mango with the bus ticket money. I hogged most of the raw fruit smeared with salt and chili. She was content with just the one slice I gave her. She didn’t tattle about the painful walk, the stingy mango. I also remembered her standing teary-eyed near the door of my class; she’d wet herself and was sent out. I reacted wretchedly; I dragged her off some distance and rebuked her because my classmates laughed at me. Again she didn’t snitch on me.

Years later when I got my first job, she was the one who washed my clothes, fetched hot coffee from the kitchen, and listened to my boasts about how important I was to my boss.

This morning, all through the sacred rituals, she insisted I stand nearby. Her hands trembled when she had to garland the groom, when she had to feed the sacred fire with spoons of ghee and rice, honey and milk, sliced fruits and coconut water. When the climactic moment arrived, of feverish drumbeats and shrill pipes, of showered rice and chorused blessings, of the groom sealing the marriage by tying around her throat the mangalyam, the turmeric-coated twine with god embossed gold medallions, she looked wildly around. We thought she would choke or run.

On her head is a single rose petal, ugly and beautiful, like a wound crafted with extraordinary attention.

In the afternoon, we thought she would faint. That was because of the hot water incident. Tradition prescribed that the bride’s mother ought to rustle up hot water in a copper pot if the groom wanted a bath. Water heated over firewood. But Mother was attending to some relatives who came late for lunch. The groom’s mother fumed: Is this the respect you show my son? Even before the wedding is over. What can happen in the future?

Nothing will happen if you don’t interfere, said blind Narayan.

My mother did give your son hot water in the morning, said pretty Kaajal.

Why are you making it such a big issue? said frail Venkat.

Tell me, do you want my daughter or not? shouted still proud Father.

And Sunitha kept shooting me desperate glances. Do something, do something, they pleaded. But my mind was numb; three years away from family have made me slow and diffident. Mother heard the ruckus and rushed to the groom. You are like my son, she said. Please understand mothers sometimes make mistakes.

~

My shoulder shakes, and someone whispers: Sunitha wants you.

It’s morning and it’s Mother.

Let’s see how much he has kept for you, says Narayan, already up and smoking and staring with those dead eyes. What is he talking about?

Hurry, says Mother.

I stride quickly to the room. The door is ajar. Roses and jasmines are scattered on the cot, on the floor. A glass on a table has half an inch of milk leftover. A plate shows crumbs of sweets and savories. Sunitha is sitting on the floor against the wall, in the same silk and gold sari she wore for the reception. Her knees are drawn up, the whites of her eyes are a moist red.

The man is leaning against the window and chewing gum. He is clad in a veshti and a vest. A lock of oily hair gleams on his brow. He blows a bubble and it goes splat. With two flicks of his tongue he retrieves the mess, and says: You are her only brother, so you have to roll it.

He gestures at the cot. I look there. The mattress is new and bare. The sheets are dumped beneath the cot.

Roll? I ask.

Just do it, Sunitha whispers.

I grasp one end of the mattress and lift and roll. Once, twice, and then I see the two ten rupee notes, flat and crisp, money that can’t buy breakfast even in a mediocre restaurant.

What’s this? I ask.

Please, Sunitha says, just… take.

Her voice cracks. She is still looking at the floor. On her head is a single rose petal, ugly and beautiful, like a wound crafted with extraordinary attention. I turn to the man. He blows another bubble. I want to slap it.

~

When I go back to the hall, Venkat and his family are packing. Mother is wiping her face with a damp towel. Kaajal is on the sofa, sitting like a doll waiting to be picked up. Narayan’s radar of a head turns to me. What did he give you? he says

I blurt out what I got.

Narayan chortles hard and long and says: Will twenty rupees fetch him a son?

Venkat dutifully laughs. This time Mary doesn’t rebuke him; maybe, she thinks, they are going anyway, so why bother?

I’ll tell them we are going, says Mother and walks towards the room.

Later, after seeing off Venkat’s and Narayan’s families, as we return home in a taxi, Mother from behind me emits a sigh so long and loud as if it was suppressed for months. Just a matter of time, she says, Sunitha will get used to him. The next moment there’s a thud on the head rest of the driver, and he, startled, looks in the rear view mirror. I turn around. Kaajal mutters a ‘”sorry” and looks at all the shops and pedestrians gliding past. Her eyes, though, are still and there’s a firmness now etched in her pretty face that warms my heart.

 

 

Ramesh AvadhaniRamesh Avadhani lives in Bengaluru, India, and has a background in marketing and journalism. His work has appeared in more than 30 periodicals worldwide. He also dabbles in screenwriting, winning four international awards for a short script and is in talks for a feature film with a British production unit. He hopes to secure a literary agent for his first novel set in India of the 1960s.

Header photo by Vatsal Bhatt, courtesy Pixabay.