Of Marriageable Age (12 page)

Balwant Uncle said this was due to historical circumstances. The first Indians had lived cramped together in the abandoned slave
logies
on the sugar estates, without regard for caste and clan, forced to compromise on their thousand-year rules and regulations.

But Deodat refused to compromise. He would not take a mongrel wife. His wife had to be of pure blood and orthodox upbringing. Her role was to ground a family pure in tradition, raise children as Brahmins. A devoted Hindu wife, steeped in the spirit of her religion, one to revive the dying faith. Most important, his three eldest sons should return home before they, too, succumbed to the spirit of secularism. A woman is the backbone of the family. The family is the backbone of society. Therefore, the woman was the backbone of society. But she had to be an aware woman. A woman of faith, a woman whose own backbone was held upright by God. When Woman falls, society falls, Deodat never tired of saying. There had to be a woman in the home. A good, strong woman. And he would have to import her from India.

The Bengali branch of the Roy family placed an advertisement for Deodat in the Times of India. But finding a good Brahmin wife for Deodat proved to be near impossible. Fathers stubbornly refused to send their daughters into the Antipodes, quite literally into the Underworld. Deodat considered returning to England to choose a wife: but that was defeating the purpose. He wanted a wife born and bred on India's soil. His Bengali relatives advised him to take a widow. Reluctantly, Deodat saw the necessity for compromise, and permitted the words ‘widow acceptable’ to be included in the ad.

Several months later Ma stepped off a ship at the Georgetown harbour. It was as easy as that.

M
A MOVED INTO
W
ATERLOO
S
TREET
, and three children were born at two-year intervals: Indrani, Ganesh and Sarojini. Deodat could not have been more pleased, because Ma was exactly what he'd wanted, a still, silent, good spirit of the house, devoted to the children, a good cook, and, above all, an ardent devotee of Shiva.

The first thing Ma did when she came to Waterloo Street was install the
puja
room, and she was quite happy to hang up pictures of Krishna and Rama and Vishnu's consort Lakshmi next to those of Siva, Saraswati, and Ganesh, as well as pictures of Jesus, Mary and Buddha. So Baba was satisfied — almost. There were only two bitter drops in his life. The first was that Natarajeshwar, Nathuram and Narendra all refused to move back into Baba's household. Narendra was only thirteen at the time, so Baba forced him to come home, but he ran away nine times and was in danger of falling into extremely bad company, so Baba deemed it better for him to live on with less-than-holy Roys rather than risk complete vagabondage on his own. The three years these boys had spent in foster care had, just as Baba had feared, secularised them beyond redemption. They had enjoyed freedoms they'd never known before; never, ever would they return to orthodoxy; and they had all taken Christian names. Now they were Richard, Walter and James, and they had all settled in London. But Baba called them by their Indian names for the rest of his life.

The second bitter drop was that caste purity ended with his marriage to Ma. There was no question of importing husbands and wives from India for his children. He would have to marry them to mongrels.

M
A WALKED BEHIND
B
ABA
. Ma's assimilation into the Roy clan was documented by two items in Balwant Uncle's archives: a creased, limp photo, passport size, of Ma, young, smiling, beautiful, wistful, confident, all these things at once, and more. And a clipping from the Times of India:
‘England-educated Brahmin barrister-at-law, widower, well-settled in Georgetown, British Guiana, South America, excellent income and social standing, seeks remarriage with Brahmin lady of childbearing age, willing to resettle in large pleasant home in Georgetown and raise a family. Widow acceptable. Dowry not required. Condition: must be literate and speak excellent English. Please send photo.’

Whatever steps had brought Ma to Baba were unknown to all and swept over, unmentioned, by Ma herself. She was a woman without a past; without a name. Baba addressed her as 'Mrs Roy', referred to her as 'my wife', or simply as 'she' and 'her'. Relatives and family friends called her 'Mrs Roy' or 'Mrs Deodat' and even 'Mrs D', or 'Ma D', depending on the degree of familiarity with her. Balwant Uncle and his wife called her Dee, short for Deodat's wife, her nephews and nieces called her Dee Auntie. Her own children called her Ma. Ma, in her turn, never spoke her husband's name in public. She called him Mr Roy, or, capitalised, 'Him', or 'He', or 'my Husband'.

Ma spoke little. Though her English was excellent (no-one asked, and no-one cared, why she had a perfect British accent) it was always Baba who did the talking. Ma's stories, of course, could go on for hours, but then only children were the listeners.

Ma did the singing. Ma performed the
pujas.
Ma worshipped Shiva. Ma healed. Ma cooked. Ma nourished. Ma was a cherished figure at all family festivities, especially weddings and wakes. It was said that when Ma worked in the kitchen the food never ran out, and even if fifty unexpected guests turned up, which was often the case because Ma's reputation spread and people were eager to find out if the rumour was true, there were always leftovers.

Ma cooked not only South Indian rice and
sambar;
she cooked Bengali, Punjabi and Gujerati.
Badaam kheer, sooji halwa
and
kajoo barfi
melted like nectar on greedy Roy tongues. On one occasion they discovered Ma could even bake a Yorkshire pudding, but no-one ever asked how she learned all this, and no-one cared. The Roy men stuffed themselves full of Ma's creations, and with swelling tummies washed their hands and mouths at the sink, burping and farting in deepest satisfaction. The Roy wives watched Ma cook with envious eyes, but Ma was too quick for them to learn her secrets. Chapattis flew out from under her rolling pin on to a growing heap like little flying saucers, her slender little hands flicking busily, expertly between the little balls of dough, the heap of flour, the rolling pin. Ma didn't give explanations; 'Cook with love,' is all she said, so the Roy women gathered in spiteful three- and foursomes and discussed Ma's failings.

Ma's hands were magic. Her children came to her with scratches and bruises and Ma would pass those little brown hands over the wound and all would be well. They came to her with tummyaches and earaches and growing-pains, and Ma would count out five or eight of the tiny round balls no bigger than a pinhead she kept in little tubes in the old wooden chest, or she'd sprinkle some strange powder in a cup of hot water and hold it to their lips, and their aches and pains would vanish.

Who knows what would have happened if the Roy clan had learned that Ma's hands could heal! No-one knew but her children. This was one art they kept within the family, as their own special secret; not through intention, but because they took it for granted. Ma's healing hands were a fact of life like the cool Atlantic breeze and the call of the kiskadee. No-one questioned it, and no-one talked about it, because they thought it was just what all mothers did.

Ma seemed intent on erasing herself. With every passing year there seemed less of her. She nourished herself on silence. She emitted an undercurrent of stillness as fine as the ether, and might very well have ceased to exist if it were not for her children. Almost, it seemed, she was raising them
against
her husband, yet without uttering a word against him, without so much as a raised eyebrow of rebuke.

M
A HAD WONDERFUL TALENTS
, as Saroj was the first to concede, but she hadn't the resources to rescue her younger daughter from Baba and the fate he had chosen for her. Ma wasn't a fighter. Saroj would have to fight her own battles.

And Ganesh was no ally. Up there in the tower on her thirteenth birthday, at the moment of her coming of age, Saroj gazed with sober, objective eyes on her brother biting into a samosa and looking into its belly as if the secret of all creation was to be found there. This beloved brother of hers lacked seriousness and zeal. He was his mother's son: not a fighter. He might struggle to create the perfect samosa, but for a greater struggle, for the life-or-death struggle facing Saroj, he was not equipped. And she was as unequipped as Ganesh — except in determination.

A caged bird has nothing but the will to escape. In desperation it beats its wings and flings itself against the bars; for the cage's latch can only be opened from outside, and the bird's owner holds the key. And even if the bird escapes it may perish, having no knowledge of the world. Out there its innocence is its greatest enemy. But perhaps a passer-by will see that cage, and the bird within struggling to escape, and will bend the bars apart so that the bird can squeeze through. And the passer-by, now a friend, will show that bird the ways of the world so that finally it can fly alone.

S
AROJ HAD NOT YET RECKONED
with Trixie Macintosh.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SAVITRI

Madras, 1921

W
HEN THE PLANTS
cried out in pain Savitri comforted them. She knew it hurt to have their flowers picked so she always spoke to them first, silently, in her mind, and she knew they listened, and brightened up. She told them how special they were, how beautiful, that that was why she had chosen them because she only picked the fullest, most beautiful, perfect blossoms for the Lord. She thanked them, and said she was sorry.

When her basket was full she sat cross-legged on the straw mat outside the kitchen door and made her garlands — garlands of purple and white, of little orange blossoms, of jasmine; and then she went into the
puja
room and laid them at the feet of Nataraj and around the framed picture of Shiva and around the soapstone statue of Ganesh. When she was finished she placed a few perfect hibiscus blossoms at strategic points: the corners of the picture, or at Nataraj's feet, or in the crook of Ganesh's arm.

When the shrine was finished, she told Amma and went into the back room to help
Thatha
get up from his mat. She handed him his stick, and
Thatha
, one hand on her shoulder, limped into the
puja
room, where by now the incense was burning and her mother was preparing the camphor for the puja, and her brothers and Appa had gathered from their various duties.
Thatha
, old and decrepit as he was, always performed the
puja,
for he was the eldest male. He slowly waved the flame of burning camphor before Nataraj and chanted the appropriate verse, and then he passed the platter with the flame around the family members and they all touched it and placed their fingers in the ashes to make the stripes of Shiva on their foreheads, followed by the one red spot of Love in the centre. The
puja
was very short, only a few minutes. When it was over her mother clipped a bunch of fresh flowers, which had been put to one side to receive Shiva's blessing, in her hair. Savitri went outside and drew an elaborate
kolam
outside the door, after which she went to fetch water.

Amma had already fetched several vessels of water for them all to take bath, but more would be needed so Savitri picked up the big brass vessel and hooked her arm around its curved rim and set off down Old Market Street. She had to wait her turn. Several women and girls were at the well before her; some of them stood aside in the section for bathing and poured water over themselves, and others were turning the pulley to bring up the bucket from the well, filling their vessels, hoisting them onto their heads and moving off to their homes. The waiting women chattered among themselves and Savitri listened until it was her turn. She let the bucket fall into the well with a loud splash and then pulled at the rope with all her might till the bucket had reached the well's rim. She emptied the water into her vessel, twisted an old towel into a circle on her head, hoisted the vessel onto this support, and straightened up carefully. The vessel was much bigger than her head and quite heavy, but Savitri by now could balance it easily. She set off home with a wide, easy swing of her hips, her upper body, head and neck perfectly still to support the vessel. She did not use her hands. Amma said she would soon be bringing home three full vessels so she would need her hands for the other two. Even sooner she would receive the second vessel, which she would balance on her thin little hip with her arm curled around the rim.

She returned home and emptied the water into the container near the bath-house. This water was for washing clothes. For drinking water, of course, they had another well, one not used by the untouchables. Appa said the untouchables made the water impure; a thing Savitri would never understand.

Now Amma gave her the milk vessel, and she sent her off to fetch milk for the big house. She was so full of joy she could not walk. She skipped and ran and danced, and yet held the vessel perfectly still and straight so she never lost a single drop of milk. She was full of joy because of the beautiful morning, the sunshine trickling through the foliage that lined the back drive, the brilliant colours of the flowers, the sandy drive freshly swept by Muthu, the seven sisters up in the tamarind tree fluttering and twittering in a joy of their own, the sapphire blue of the sky, the peacock calling for his bride — it was all too much for a little girl's heart and the joy just rippled out of her and made her feet dance and skip, and still she never spilled a drop. She set the milk vessel carefully at the side of the path and twirled, laughing to see the way her skirt billowed out around her in a swirl of colour, and she waved her shawl as she moved so that it filled with air like a brilliant red sail, filtering the early morning sunlight. But then she heard Vali's urgent call quite nearby and a loud fluttering of wings, and Vali landed on the sandy path before her. She stopped spinning immediately, for Vali's visits were rare, and special. And when he came to her on an early morning like this it meant the day would be auspicious.