One Part Woman (2 page)

He lay on the cot and closed his eyes. When the body realizes there is no work to do, it throws open its doors to weariness. Ponna was happy that Kali had come as promised. Even from where Kali was lying, he could sense her prancing around the house as though she had just been married. Wherever in the house she might be, he always knew what she’d be up to. She pervaded his thoughts. She came to occupy them so much that he could tell her every movement and gesture. His nostrils could now sense that she was making snacks for him. He even knew what snack it would be.

She woke him up a little while later. ‘Maama, maama,’ she called to him affectionately. She was holding a plate of snacks in her hands—hot pakodas and kacchayam, made with rice. He roused himself as if from a deep sleep. A smile lit up her entire face, spreading to her eyes, nose, cheeks and forehead. Kali wondered how Ponna managed to make every part of her face smile. Keeping the plate on his lap, Ponna sat down on the floor.

‘Did you see the tree?’ he asked. The pakoda melted with a crunch in his mouth.

‘Yes, I see it every time I come here,’ she said uninterestedly.

‘No, dear one. Look up. See how it has grown. You can’t even begin to count the flowers and the top-shaped fruits!’ he said excitedly.

‘Ponna, come here!’ her mother yelled from inside the house. ‘Shred this jaggery for me.’

‘Coming!’ she yelled. Turning back to Kali, she said, ‘This was planted when we got married. Twelve years have gone by.’ She sighed.

A shadow fell on her face. She must have been thinking about how the tree had grown so lush and abundant in twelve years while not even a worm had crawled in her womb. Every wretched thing reminded her of that lack.

After the wedding, she had fought with her father and had taken a cow from here. It delivered seven or eight calves, populating Kali’s barn with its offspring. She’d tear up just looking at that cow. She had once cried out loud, ‘I don’t have the boon that even this mute creature has been blessed with.’ Her tears filled him with rage against that cow and its calves. He felt like killing them all. But when he looked at their faces, he would melt: ‘Poor things. What can they do about our suffering?’

‘Palm jaggery adds a special taste to the kacchayam,’ he said, trying to change the subject. He tore a piece and held it to her lips.

‘Yes! Now is when your love pours forth,’ she said
in mock anger and proceeded to take the morsel into her mouth.

Her mother called from inside: ‘Come here, girl. The oil’s heating up.’

‘She can’t stand it even for a little while! Nallayi is devious. It’s not for no reason that they say she knows no time or place. Why is she yelling so much now?’ Ponna got up and went in.

His eyes were fixed on her as she walked away. Her body had stayed firm. As he gazed after her, desire welled up within him, and he wanted her right then. But they had no privacy here, at his in-laws’ home. When they were just married, space was made for them by rearranging sacks of harvested millets and pulses. But when he was no longer a new son-in-law, he got a cot in the porch or in front of the house. He was itching to drag her and take her home.

The midday sun tormented his body. During the monsoons, he stayed home cuddling with her. It had occurred to him a few times that had she borne a child perhaps she too would have become haggard like the other women. When thoughts of women first came to him, it was Ponna’s body that teased and tortured him incessantly. Unable to bear the agony, he tried to avoid looking at her. But his mind’s eye would somehow seek her out. That had not changed to this day. But, whenever he embraced her, succumbing to the tease, it occurred to him that it was not the same embrace as before. Earlier, there was an urgency and passion to get to know her anew each time. That had
dried up now. Now even when he took his face close to hers, his mind started worrying, ‘Will it happen at least this time?’ That was enough to put out the fire, and only ashes bloomed in the embers of his passion. In an attempt to douse it all with water, he started going about it mechanically. ‘God, please bless us this time. Make it happen somehow,’ he kept repeating. It all went up in smoke.

For seven or eight years now, there had been talk of a second marriage—both openly and secretively. As a result, many people had become the objects of Ponnayi’s hatred. Chellapa Gounder, who dealt in cattle, came to the barnyard once. One of Kali’s cows had failed to yield a calf despite two or three attempts at mating her with a bull. He’d wanted to get rid of the cow by selling it to Gounder. While they were talking, Ponna was cleaning the floor, ridding it of cow dung. She never stayed put when she came to the barnyard. Even if Kali had just removed the dung, she would clean the floor of the cattle shed right away. She would give the calves a bath and tether them elsewhere; then she’d feed them. Mostly, it was she who cleaned out the goat refuse. She was focused on her work while Kali was talking to Gounder. But Gounder kept his gaze fixed on her as he tied up his hair in a knot. ‘It is fate, mapillai,’ said Gounder, using the colloquial variation of ‘maapillai’ or ‘son-in-law’, also a term of friendly address between two men. ‘That is just how some cows are. No matter what you do, they never get pregnant. Just quietly change the cow. If you say yes, I can fetch you one right away.’

He said it with a smile, but Ponna immediately understood the sense behind it. She felt as though a huge rock had been pressed against her heart. She wanted to drag him by the hair and thrash him with a whip. Instead, she picked up the stick that was lying in a corner of the cowshed and hit the cow on its legs and back. The poor creature. With panic in its eyes, it ran around the shed trying to dodge this unexpected attack.

‘It has no sense of time and place. Shouldn’t it know I was picking up the dung? It keeps stepping on my foot. It’s come just to incur my wrath. Are you trying to get smart with me? I will cut off your tail, you wretched creature!’

Gounder ran away saying, ‘All right, mapillai! I will see you later.’

He never came back. But when Kali met him elsewhere, he said, ‘That is how some cows are. If you go in front of them, they attack you with their horns. If you go behind them, they kick you. Your plight is difficult.’ Sometimes he would say, ‘Mapillai! Shall I find a new cow for you?’

Kali would reply, ‘Come to the barnyard, uncle. We will discuss the matter.’

‘Oh no! You think you can fuel the fire and watch the riot? Your cow is your business. Leave me alone!’ And Gounder would drop the subject.

Even though Kali was trying to be funny, these conversations made him extremely sad. He lamented the fact that he had become the butt of ridicule in the village.
Ponna never tired from lashing out at anyone who came to the barnyard talking about this. She did everything short of thrashing them with the broomstick. So no one brought it up when she was around. But they never failed to do so when they caught him alone.

During moments of intimacy, Ponna would ask, ‘Maama, are you planning to abandon me and marry another woman? Tell me.’

He would cajole her. ‘You are the apple of my eye—my pearl, my treasure. How can I ever leave you?’

‘That’s what I like to hear.’ Saying this, she would melt.

But he also felt like teasing her. ‘I will never abandon you. Even if another woman comes, I won’t abandon you.’

‘Chee!’ she would push him away and cry. This was no joking matter for her.

When she saw people come and go, she would ask, ‘Was this about a marriage alliance?’

‘Hmm,’ he would nod.

‘Has it been fixed?’

‘Almost.’

‘What will be my plight then?’

‘You can stay in a corner,’ he would say.

She would cry herself to exhaustion. ‘Is it my fate that
I should beg for food from another woman? I will leave right away for my father’s house. They will feed me at least once a day, wouldn’t they? After all, they gave birth to me. Don’t I have a brother? I will fall at his feet. Won’t he feed me porridge for the rest of my life? If nothing works, can’t I find a small rope? Doesn’t the portia tree have its branches spread all over? I will hang from one of those.’

Watching her antics, Kali would secretly smile to himself. Ponna would behave as if everything was over and he had already brought another woman home. He wondered if she was rehearsing for such a moment. It always took days to placate her.

This was their game. If they’d had children playing around the house, they wouldn’t have needed this. Such games were just a ploy to keep themselves from getting bored looking at each other’s faces. But he had no thought of marrying another girl.

‘One torture is enough for this birth,’ he would say.

‘Oh! You think I am torturing you?’ And she would get furious. But when she said, ‘Maama, won’t I ever get pregnant?’ his heart would melt and he would rush to comfort her.

‘Why not, dear? You are only twenty-eight now. You were sixteen when I married you. And you look just the same. Women are giving birth right till they are forty and forty-five. We are not that old.’ Their hearts swung between faith and resignation.

Neither of them had had their birth charts made. If he asked his mother about the time of his birth, she would
lament, ‘I struggled for two days after my water broke. Who took care of me? The midwife somehow saved both our lives. I prayed to Karia Kali. That’s why I named you Kaliyannan. I don’t even remember if it was the month of Maasi or Panguni. Do you think we are royalty to have the time and day of birth noted down? What’s the use of a birth chart for someone who rolls in the dust? Even if you rub yourself with oil before rolling, you will have to be content with whatever sticks to you.’

Ponna, too, did not have the details of her birth written down. So they both showed their hands to palmists everywhere and had to be content with what they were told. Whenever she went to the market, Ponna would go to have her card read by a parrot. She had been to every astrologer in the area who picked cards using a parrot. They all predicted good tidings. Not even once was a bad card drawn. During fairs, there were even those who made predictions by drawing lines. Some used large pearls, others had pebbles piled up. It didn’t cost too much—perhaps one or two rupees. All of them predicted good things. If she mentioned that she’d been married for over ten years, they would say, ‘You will get it late, but you will get it for sure.’

In hard times, all threads of faith would come together.

Kali was wiping his hands after finishing the hot pakodas and sweetened rice cakes when Ponna brought another plate of snacks and a mug of water. Whenever they came here for a feast, they claimed this space under the tree. Night or day, this was where they stayed. The house was a secluded one in the middle of the fields, so there were no intrusions. If it started drizzling, he moved to the porch. But he never went inside the house, which was comprised only of one big room. Apart from Muthu, his wife and child, this space was also shared by Kali’s father-in-law and mother-in-law. His father-in-law, too, would keep to the porch and the cattle enclosure. Even Muthu would only enter the house at night to sleep.

‘Have you taken the blessing money for the festival?’ Kali asked Ponna.

‘Like that’s the only thing lacking in my life. If I had one child each in my arms, on my waist and in my womb, I would demand it rightfully from my father and brother.
Now, if they give it to me, I will take it. If they don’t, I will not ask.’

They hadn’t been to the temple chariot festival for two years. Before that, it used to be an elaborate affair with a new sari, dhoti, towel, and so on. They were even gifted up to ten or twenty rupees as money to offer to the gods. It was not that Kali had come to expect any of this as a matter of routine. But he was only trying to make conversation and wanted to know her thoughts.

Holding her hand affectionately, Kali made her sit on the cot. The cloth covering her bosom slipped slightly as she sat down. Kali’s eyes penetrated the fabric. Quickly pulling it back in place, she said, ‘Look where your eyes stray in the middle of the day!’

He replied, taking mock offence, ‘If I can’t see them, then what are they for?’

‘Hey, Ponna!’ came her mother’s yell, ‘Come here now and attend to the lentils. How many things can I handle at once?’

‘The old hag is not able to do anything on her own,’ Ponna said as she got up. Seeing the brightness on his face, she laughed, reached for the knot in his hair and undid it before running into the house.

She had great fondness for the little knot of hair on his head. She often untied it and played with his locks, often by braiding them. ‘Your hair is thicker than mine, maama,’ she’d say. ‘But there is no little petal of a hand that could hold this and climb up your shoulders.’

She managed to connect anything to the subject of children. It was not a worry she could keep hidden within herself. Even if she did, people would come to know anyway. She had no other thought besides trying to pre-empt other people’s questions about this.

Last year, avoiding the fast, Kali took Ponna to see the chariot festival. It was the day the big chariot was taken around. People from the villages around Tiruchengode were swarming the streets. When you are in a crowd, your spirits are somehow lifted. When they were surveying the shops, he heard someone call out, ‘Hey, Kali, are you well?’

Bommidi Mani was smiling from the other side of the crowd. It had been several years since he left the village. He had settled down on his own land in Bommidi. He shouted from where he stood, ‘Do you have children?’ Kali went pale. Even though the crowd carried on as before, he felt as if everyone had turned to look at him. Thankfully, Ponna was inside the bangle shop.

Embarrassed, he gestured a no. Mani smacked himself on the head to express his sympathy with Kali’s fate and said, ‘Get married again.’ Kali had to smile it away and vanish into the crowd. It annoyed Kali that though they might have a million things wrong with their own lives, people found great pleasure in poking and prodding other people’s miseries. Couldn’t they even remember they were in a public place? What kind of pride comes from knowing that the other person does not have what one has? Does everyone have everything? Isn’t there always something lacking?

Someone or the other always appeared to remind him of it. ‘I may or may not have children. What is it to you? Shut up and leave!’ he felt like yelling. But he never could. What stopped him from reciprocating their rudeness? Ponna was able to give cheeky retorts. He could not.

His mother believed that going to Kallipalayam Nadar was the solution to every problem. The man would make his predictions only once a week when, after finishing his routine task of climbing palm trees, he would come to a little shrine under a tree in the forest. This would be at around ten in the morning. The ritual was simple. It was important to cut open a lemon—this signified a sacrifice. He would then divide a cluster of beads into two sets, taking the bunch on the right-hand side in both his hands and shaking them. He would then proceed to arrange them in pairs. If a single bead remained, things would be in one’s favour. But if they all paired up, it was cause for worry. Every time Kali and Ponna had been to him so far, they had always drawn a single, unpaired bead. So Nadar believed that they would definitely be blessed with a child.

‘There is some curse that you have inherited. Everything will be all right if we find out what that is and make offerings for appeasement,’ he said once.

Kali’s mother did not know what curse it was. ‘Why should you suffer for what some dog might have done?’ she cried. But something occurred to her after she thought about it for a few days. She remembered an incident. It was from the time of Kali’s great-grandfather, Nachimuthu Gounder.

One year, the yield of castor seeds was high in his fields, and he would invariably carry a sack or two to the market every week. One particular week, he took two sacks and unloaded them under a tamarind tree. The Chettiyar merchant, who normally bought the castor seeds, was there as usual, sitting with his men and his measuring mugs. In those days, one padi of castor seeds fetched only an anna. It was great luck if a sack fetched you five rupees.

When Nachimuthu Gounder unloaded his sacks of castor seeds, a cart loaded with sacks arrived from Pazhayapalayam. It was clearly from a bigger farm, but they had no one to unload the sacks.

Chettiyar said, ‘Gounder, please help with unloading these. I’ll get you paid for it.’

Nachimuthu Gounder did the task obligingly. But in the end the numbers did not tally. ‘There were fourteen sacks,’ said the driver of the cart. There were only thirteen on the ground.

And, curiously, the two sacks that Nachimuthu Gounder had brought as his own had now grown to three. Chettiyar noticed that and remarked, ‘I thought you had only two.’

If Gounder had said, ‘I unloaded one here by mistake,’ the issue might have ended there. Instead, he swore that he had brought three sacks. The driver of the cart from Pazhayapalayam was not going to leave the matter there. So it went to the temple.

All unresolved issues went to the Tiruchengode Murugan temple. Halfway up the hill, on the sixtieth step, Murugan
stands carved on the rock. There is even a belief that long ago this was the main temple on the hill. When the hill was covered with dense forest, the dwellers made this deity. This original god still made sure truth prevailed. Once the sixty steps of truth began, people bent down in obeisance on every step. Even though steps have been carved up to the top of the hill and another, bigger temple has sprouted there, this Murugan on the sixtieth step is the original god.

Every step had a stone lamp. Whenever there was a matter to be settled in the temple, the plaintiff filled each lamp with oil and lit them. The defendant was made to snuff out each lamp and arrive at Murugan’s feet and swear that he or she did not do what they had been accused of. Nachimuthu Gounder put out all sixty lamps. Thinking of Murugan as just an image scratched on a rock, he swore at his feet. For just a sack of castor seeds, for a meagre five rupees, he perjured in front of a god.

They say that soon after this incident, Gounder lost his mind and wandered all over town. Apparently, he pulled everyone by the hand saying, ‘Come, let’s go to the Murugan on the sixtieth step.’ No one knew what happened to him once he left the village and started wandering the streets of Tiruchengode. Kali’s grandfather was his only child. His father, too, had been his grandfather’s only child. They both died young. Amma narrated all this and started crying.

Seeking redemption from this curse, Kali and Ponna scaled the hill. For sixty days, they lit the sixty lamps and cast themselves at the feet of Murugan, pleading for his blessings.
The entire castor seed yield from that year became the oil in those lamps. But even that was not enough. So they bought more, took some in alms, and continued to fill those lamps. They even tried pacifying Murugan’s anger by smearing oil on the deity’s body.

They would leave in their cart at dusk. By the time they would tether the bulls at the foot of the hill, having requested the flower vendor to keep an eye on them, and climb and reach the sixtieth step, the day would have ended. The priest would be waiting for them. Kali filled the lamps with oil, and Ponna lighted them. The priest bathed Murugan every day in castor oil. The belief was that only castor oil could appease a century-long wrath. When they finished the rituals and climbed down the hill, the town would have gone to bed. But nothing could placate Murugan.

Kali’s grandmother, however, had another explanation. She took umbrage at her daughter-in-law’s story of the family curse. ‘Was it your mother who came as the Chettiyar who bought the castor seeds?’ she said. ‘Who knows which dog stole the sack? She is unloading that crime on my family. No one has ever told me this story. Your mother must have stayed up many nights to come up with it. What does she know? She can’t even count! She came into the family so much later. But never mind. You lit the lamps for god. Only good can come out of it.’

But until the day she died, his grandmother was worried about the perpetuation of her lineage. She sent the young
couple to any temple festival anywhere, saying, ‘Go and beg for alms.’ They did all of that, but nothing came of it.

Furthermore, Kali’s grandmother had a different story to tell—one that competed with his mother’s theory of their current predicament. He thought they were vying with each other to narrate stories of curses and retribution. He lamented his fate that he had to do anything they asked him to do. He feared that if he refused, Ponna would unleash her tirade. She would behave as if doing that one thing would finally ensure childbirth. Such was the case with his grandmother’s story too. But this one didn’t walk its talk either.