One Part Woman (7 page)

An ant in his armpit woke Kali up from his slumber. The skin swelled up a little when he rubbed it involuntarily. He sat up. Sounds of cooking were coming from inside the house. Muthu hadn’t returned yet. Kali felt like going for a short walk. Other than the house and the portia tree, there was mainly sun-scorched dry land all around. It had been twenty days since the month of Vaigasi had begun, but the sky hadn’t yet opened its eyes to shed tears of rain. The farmers were waiting for the rain so they could begin the first round of ploughing. But while the heat kept rising, not a single smudge of grey could be spotted in the sky. It sowed within them the fear that the rains might fail this year.

There was no problem of fodder for the cattle. One granary of pulses and another of corn were still intact. Water scarcity might hit them, but whatever water was left in the well could be used sparingly—none for the coconut trees, only for the cattle. After all, it would have to rain at least by Aipasi or Karthigai. The god in Thattangadu had apparently
prophesied this: ‘There will be less rain this year for sure!’ Kali thought he should plan accordingly.

He looked up. The sun was overhead. It must be around noon. He wondered if his mother would have given water to the cows. He had put the husk in the shed. The cows only needed to be brought and tethered. His mother would do the work for one or two days, but he was contented only when he did it all himself. He wondered why he could not trust anyone. Ponna always scolded him, ‘I too am a farmer’s daughter. Don’t you think I can handle them for a day? What is it that you do to them that I don’t?’ At night, even a little movement from them would wake him up. It had been several years since he had slept peacefully. Even when the body is ready for deep rest, the mind keeps irking it just like the ant from this tree. How can one sleep like that?

The barnyard occupied his mind wherever he was. It was only there that he felt safe. It was enough just to be there and talk to the cattle. When he was alone in the fields, someone would come at night to keep him company. Whenever Uncle Nallupayyan came, Kali was delighted. He was a distant relative of Kali’s and must have been over fifty. And he always spoke with great excitement.

Uncle Nallupayyan never married. It was all because of what had happened in his youth. He did not get along with his father. They stayed in the same house, but they tried not to see each other. He found his father’s voice as bitter as neem fruit. The moment he heard it, he would run far away. When asked what exactly the problem was, he smiled
as he explained, ‘When I was a child, he took me on his shoulders to see the temple chariot. Everything would have been fine had he come straight back home after seeing the chariot. Instead, he went to the prostitutes’ street, carrying me along. He sat me down on the porch and went inside one of the houses. I waited for a while, but it seemed like the man was not going to be out soon. So I walked back home on my own. I must have been five or six years old. Did I keep quiet about this at home? No. I told my mother that it happened like this, like that, and so on. Even my mother did not mind the fact that the little child had walked all that distance alone. She took umbrage only to the fact that he went to a prostitute. He came long after I had returned and said, “The boy got lost in the crowds. There is nowhere I haven’t looked for him. That is all our bad luck.” My mother rushed towards him with a broomstick and hit him on the head. She screamed, “You want a prostitute? If you come into the house again, I will chew off your neck.” It appears that my mother never allowed him near her after that. That made him angry at me. Whenever he saw me, he would grimace like he’d just drunk some castor oil. As for me, I could never forget how he sat me down at the entrance to the prostitute’s house and vanished inside. So, we don’t get along.’

When Nallupayyan was fifteen or sixteen years old, the father and son got into a massive fight. Standing in the field, his father threw a ball of sand at him, and in response he threw the spade at his father. It cut into his father’s calf and the old man collapsed, screaming, ‘Aiyo!’ Scared that he would be
caught, Uncle Nallupayyan ran to the house and took money from his mother’s purse, which she kept hidden inside a pot. He then ran away from the village and did not come back for six months. When they finally got over their anger at his stealing the money, they looked for him here and there, but they could not find him.

Six months later, early one morning, when his mother stepped outside the house, she saw her son sleeping there. She made a huge scene. He could not answer any questions about where he went and what he did. He had grown dark and gaunt. But within a week he improved a little in his mother’s care.

‘I cannot believe I named this wretched dog the “good” one,’ his father murmured, brooding over what ‘nalla’ in ‘Nallupayyan’ meant. ‘I should hit my own head with a slipper. A dog that steals from his own home can even drop a rock on your head while you sleep,’ he fumed.

Uncle said to his mother, ‘Is your husband suggesting that I go steal from other people’s homes?’

When others asked his father about the son, he would say, ‘That barbarian was not born to me. Who knows for which bastard she dropped her clothes to beget this one?’ But he made sure he didn’t say any of this within his wife’s hearing. He could never forgive his son for earning him the reputation that he sat his own child outside a prostitute’s house and went in.

After that, it became a routine for Uncle Nallupayyan to run away every two months or so. The moment anyone said anything even remotely hurtful, he ran away. No one knew
where he went and what he did. ‘Where will that wretched dog go? He must be outside some restaurant, feeding on leftovers,’ his father would say. Once Uncle gained the reputation for being unstable, no one was willing to offer their daughter in marriage to him. Even after all his younger brothers were married, they could not find a girl for him. ‘I don’t want to earn the sin of wrecking a girl’s life,’ said his father and abandoned the search for a bride for his son. But his mother never stopped ranting.

Uncle himself did not care for marriage. When he shaved off his beard and moustache, his mother sang a dirge and made such a scene as though someone had died:

Your first shave,

your becoming a bridegroom,

I thought these eyes would see and tear up.

This is no first shave,

and you are no bridegroom,

you roamed aimlessly

and have tired, dark eyes.

What do I do? What do I do?

But Uncle was not the kind to be moved by such dirges. He hugged his mother, wiped away her tears and said, ‘What did you accomplish by getting married? You spread your pallu for a worthless husband, gave birth to so many children, and you are suffering till today. Drop the matter. I don’t need to go through the same hell.’

Kali, lying on the cot in his farm and listening to these old stories, said, ‘Where all did you go, Uncle? Look at me. I am reluctant even to leave this spot and go to the fair in Tiruchengode once a week. I feel it is good to be contented with this barnyard and the field. Where did you go for three or six months at a stretch?

‘Kalippa,’ Uncle replied, ‘the world is endless. It stretches on and on. On my way, if I got lost and wandered a bit, it would appear that I was returning to where I started from. In those moments, I hated our village. When the money in hand was all spent and I had nowhere else to go, I would come back home very reluctantly.’

He was the not the kind to open up and give words to his feelings. But the barnyard made even Uncle Nallupayyan say, ‘Kalippa, when I lie here in your farm, it feels as comforting as lying in my mother’s womb.’ That was exactly the way Kali felt about his barnyard.

He always slept in the farm. Even in summer, he laid his cot out in the open. During the monsoons and in winter, the cot would lie inside the shed. His was a home in the village complete with a porch, a wide entrance, a courtyard, a granary—all constructed with his own labour. He left the courtyard for his mother. In the early days of his marriage, he tried sleeping at home. But the darkness of the four walls and the thatched roof were not for him. He had to see the stars when he opened his eyes. The moon had to shine down on him. He needed to hear the occasional sounds from the cattle shed: a cow clearing its throat, a goat bleating sweetly.
How could he lie around inside the house without any of these? So he made the barnyard his spot again.

He always went back home for dinner. Whenever he felt like being with Ponna, he stayed back after dinner. Whenever he woke up, he went back to the farm. On some nights, he’d go to the barnyard just to sleep. He would come back home as soon as he woke up. All he needed to do was tap on the door gently. Ponna let him in. Initially, it was difficult for Ponna to get used to his habits—this going to and fro between the house and the farm, which was at some distance. She was also scared about the night insects on the farm. But he said, ‘For me, night is the real afternoon.’

This was the land in which he was born and raised. This was where he had roamed about. There was no place here that he did not know. Also, Aanangur was not a large place where you could easily get lost. What was called the village was just a section of twenty Gounder houses. Four or five of those families lived in their fields and used their houses to store their harvest. Beyond the Gounder quarter was the one for the Chakkilis. This again had ten or fifteen houses. And a field’s length separated one quarter from the other. Kali’s field and barnyard were to the east of the village. If he took long strides, he could reach home before he finished chewing a betel nut.

In the afternoons, as soon as he finished his work, he took a nap—in fact, a deep sleep. And he would end up not sleeping well at night. His was a chicken’s sleep. If something grated against the fence, the dog would bark and he would
wake up. If the chicken started clucking, that was it, he could not sleep any more. So was the case with the calf’s moo. And if thoughts of Ponna came to him, he would leave immediately, closing the makeshift gate behind him. Since it was night-time, he would walk in his underwear. He knew which path was safe from stray dogs. Ponna had become used to this too. In the season of toddy, Kali would sleep until the intoxication wore off. Even after that, he would lie awake, shifting about. He had slept very little these past two years.

Kali’s mind turned towards an incident some years ago. It was the same Vaigasi month, the time of the chariot festival. His mother-in-law had come to invite them home for the festival. Her home was just the next village, Keezheripatti. So she never really stayed the night when she visited them. But that once, surprisingly, she did. And not just that; she dragged her cot to the courtyard next to her daughter’s mother-in-law. The two old women whispered to each other all night, but neither he nor Ponna could make out what they were discussing so intently. Only a wall separated them from Ponna, but try as she did, she could not hear anything. Nor could she guess what it could be about. In the ten years that Ponna and Kali had been married, the mothers hadn’t spoken so intimately even once. They had their own grievances against each other. Usually they kept their interactions to a minimum. So then what had changed?

‘They keep talking back and forth. Maybe they’re planning to build a fortress and rule. Or maybe they’re scheming against me,’ ranted Ponna.

Her suspicion was that they were talking about a second marriage for Kali. Had he too turned against her? She knew that her parents did not mind if Kali were to marry again. But their condition was that he should still keep their daughter with him.

The next morning, she could not keep quiet any longer. She said, ‘What, Mother? Looks like you are suddenly getting all intimate with my mother-in-law.’ But her mother did not reveal anything.

‘We are both old women. What else could we talk about besides the past? Do you think we were scheming to build a castle?’

When her own mother was so reticent about it, there was no way Ponna could have extracted anything from her mother-in-law. She went to Kali bearing her surprise and suspicion.

‘I think they have found you a girl. These two hags are trying to ruin my life.’

He said, ‘I will marry the girl only if you like her. Don’t worry.’

‘Oho! You are now entertaining the thought, is it?’ she pouted and turned her face away.

Whenever he spoke like that, she was miffed. Then he consoled her. This was a ritual for them. After thinking long and hard about a second marriage, he had abandoned the idea. In truth, the thought had occurred to him once or twice, but his mind simply could not see any other woman in Ponna’s place.