Kalyana Page 17

  You were called to the earth for me alone…

  The love song still ringing in my head.

  Mango juice, running down my face. Sweet, bitter taste on my lips. Is that the scent of sandalwood smoke that I smell? My heart is all tied up in knots. My chest is feverish and cold, at once alight with fire and frozen with fear. My body is tense, closed, ungiving, unforgiving.

  I lie in the warm glow of the starlit night, listening to the wild dogs howling outside. I wonder if, in time, I will become accustomed to Kirtan’s hands grazing my skin, his lips finding mine, in the quiet shadows of the long, sweltering nights. I wonder if, in time, I will learn to trust and to succumb to my husband’s tender touch. If, in time, I will learn to slowly open, to allow him fully inside. But even then, I wonder, will I ever erase Uncle Baldev’s scent completely from my mind?

  Then I see in the far distance of my mind shadows of four women. Shadows only, but they are dancing and thumping their feet, shaking the ground. I succumb to Kirtan’s embrace. His gentle kisses rain over my back. But they touch my soul.

  Traditionally, after marriage a young couple moves into the home of the groom’s parents, so that the wife might take on many of the household duties and ease her mother-in-law’s burden. But Kirtan’s mother and father had moved back to Nadi, their original home. Kirtan and I could not go with them, as Kirtan was now employed as an accountant in a prestigious Australian bank located in the middle of Suva. His office sat in the downtown area, overlooking both sides of the capital city: the deep blue ocean and the hustle and bustle of a growing town.

  Moving in with my own family was out of the question for Kirtan. Like my father, my husband was a proud man. He did not wish for his first actions as a married man to raise curious eyes or tickle ears. “Men must be able to support their wives, Kalyana. It is simply not right for a man to move into the home of his wife’s parents.” Then, chuckling, he said, “Besides, a household can’t have two masters.” Two masters? Perhaps he meant to say a household can’t have two womanly heads. Together, we set up our new home, a rented flat on the outskirts of Suva.

  One thing that did not change with marriage was my name. For a woman in Fiji, the object of taking a surname was to finally have a last name; if I already had one, what point was there in pushing the matter further? Kirtan had tried, weakly though, to make a case. “How will people know that we are a family if you go around with a different last name than me?” he said gruffly.

  “You take on my last name, then,” I said calmly. The headmaster’s big stick had forever burned my new surname into my mind and body, but it was no longer a painful memory. I had grown up a woman with her own full name, and through the years I had proudly clung to it. It was a possession all my own, much like the treasured stove of my childhood.

  “Kalyana, men don’t take women’s last names,” my husband persisted.

  “Well, you be the first then. Be progressive, Kirtan.” I smirked, but I could sense that he was still unconvinced; and so I spoke in a language that I knew he could understand.

  “You know when a man looks at his wife, years later, and says, ‘You’re not the person I married?’” I said. “It’s because your life path and the person who you are meant to be is tied to your name. When a woman changes her name after marriage, she does not just change who she is. She also changes who she becomes.”

  Kirtan perked up slightly, eyes open and bright. “It’s like she changes her destiny.”

  I smiled.

  He was smiling, too. “Everything is tied to numbers and the stars up above.” He paused. “Besides, you’ll do whatever you want to do anyway, Kalyana,” he mumbled before dropping the subject.

  Perhaps he still harbored a secret fantasy that, in due time, I would soften my resolve and discard my father’s name and take his, just as a snake sheds its old skin and reveals a new one. But I never did take his last name, and eventually he became accustomed to marriage to Kalyana Seth.

  26

  Quickly we settled into the routine of married life. And a full year passed.

  Kirtan worked from nine until five, Monday to Friday, a typical office worker’s hours. I had expected this, of course, but what I had never anticipated was the haunting loneliness that Kirtan’s daily absence left behind. And yet in a way I relished being alone for what I believe may have been the first time in my life.

  Being alone brought its own kind of pleasures. I, the lover of late risings, now slept in until ten in the morning most weekdays. My mother was not there to criticize me, awaken me, scrutinize me. No one breathed a word about aerobics or mouthed wise proverbs about early risers. If I chose, I could spend a few hours watching videos and movies, then rush through the mundane housewifely chores: make the bed, throw the clothes in the washer, hang them in the sun to dry, cook a big pot of curry, potato, or beans, or chicken or rice pilau. I would have some of that meal for lunch and save the rest for dinner. Why did my mother always prepare two meals when one would have sufficed?

  In the late afternoon I would drop kajal in my eyes, paint my nails and lips, and rouge my cheeks. Then, like Manjula waiting for her groom so many years ago, I would await Kirtan’s return.

  Although I enjoyed the quiet of an empty house, Kirtan’s homecoming was a source of great pleasure every evening. Sometimes we would go to the cinema, hand in hand. On weekends we might walk in companionable silence, through parks, along shores. Occasionally, we would pay calls on Kirtan’s friends, cousins, uncles, and aunts, for his family was much larger than mine. We often visited the temple, where he would sing bhajans and beat tablas.

  Kirtan was a good man, and he offered me a life that was full of predictability and certainty. In many ways, it was the life that my father had given my mother. In many ways, it was the life I had not realized how much I wanted.

  My mother often telephoned me to talk about this and that. Some days I just ignored the calls by pretending not to be at home. I would listen to the telephone ring twenty times, my face turned away. Half an hour later, it would ring again.

  I knew what she wanted to talk about these days: the newly formed Labour Party, the Indian people’s own political party. She was rooting for them to win the election.

  Since 1970, when Fiji gained independence from British rule, the predominantly Fijian Alliance Party had run the nation’s political affairs. But in recent days, with trade union support, a new party had arisen. This so-called Labour Party would allow the Indo-Fijians to gain political power by filling a majority of the seats. To my mother’s intense pleasure, the new party was sweeping through the Fijian towns and villages and growing in popularity every day.

  Yet as the Labour Party emerged out of obscurity, another political group was stirring on Fiji shores amidst the beating of drums: the iTaukei Movement.

  As a child, I had firmly believed that a movement was mighty, powerful, and a necessary good: a fight for equality, a struggle for the submissive to rise and take the reins. But my mother insisted that this new movement was born out of a greed for more power. It arose, she insisted, to stop equality from truly blossoming.

  And yet I understood differently, for I saw beyond the iTaukeis’ long speeches in the burning sun. The iTaukei Movement had arisen because of fear: fear of uprisings, fear of losing the way of the past, fear of change itself. I thought of how fear of my mother had paralyzed me and kept me in silence, and how my mother’s fear of shame had caused her to deny the present and dictate my future. If the subservient grasped the reins and gained power, throwing tradition on its head, the uncertainty of the future could be overwhelming. For this reason I did not believe that the iTaukei Movement arose from greed.

  But I did not express these or any other political ideas to my mother. If I did allow the subject to wander to such things, my mother would quickly make her political fervor personal. She would implore me to ensure that Kirtan and his family voted for the Labou
r Party in the elections. And her interest was not limited to family alone; she even set up her own mock poll in the village, teaching aging Indians who couldn’t read properly how to recognize the Labour Party symbol on the ballot and cross it off with a blue pen. Carefully she instructed them to avoid going over the lines, which she feared might spoil the ballot. In other villages, women like my mother, whose children had grown and left home, who now had idle time with nothing to fill, followed suit. They trained the illiterate to vote for the Labour Party.

  When she wasn’t gathering support out in the village, Mother was glued to the radio. On election day, she must barely have breathed as she awaited the final count.

  I wonder whether she screamed with joy when the Labour Party won the elections, and by twenty-eight seats, too. On April 13, 1987, Dr. Timoci Bavadra took office as the prime minister to head the nation’s first government of mainly ethnic Indian origin. He announced his cabinet members the next day.

  My mother celebrated. Kirtan and I were invited to my old home for a feast: duck curry and goat pilau, eggplant and potatoes, puries and rotis, and raita and tomato chutney. For dessert, Mother cooked rice pudding and even bought a can of pears and a carton of vanilla ice cream. She glowed in her pale-blue printed dress.

  “For more than a century, Indians have bled and sweated in this country!” Her enthusiasm was like a benediction, her confidence unwavering. “We’ve built roads, hotels, and buildings that reach to the sky. Finally, we get some recognition! Finally, we gain more political power! Praise God!”

  Kirtan chatted with my father and Raju, but I sat quietly, taking in my mother in all her glory. I wondered when I had last seen her this way. Her political chatter rarely held my interest, but tonight I could not keep my eyes off my mother. The illuminated woman of my childhood had long disappeared into the shadows. How had I not realized it until this night, when I saw her once again shine as brightly as the moon?

  My mother’s joy, however, was to topple as quickly as the newly elected government. Just a month and a day later, ten soldiers, all wearing masks and carrying ammunition, led by Sitiveni Rabuka, the head of the military, took Dr. Bavadra and all his ministers to some unknown place. And just as years ago, in one instant, my world as I knew it lay on the floor, crumbled to pieces, the great nation of Fiji, peaceful and kind, as its people knew it, fell into chaos. Though there were some things that did not change: Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, who had been ousted from his seat of prime minister at the election earlier that year, was reinstated, leading people to suspect that the defeated Alliance Party was behind all of this.

  After that terrible day the political situation rapidly got worse. Another coup quickly followed. Martial law was declared, and all commerce on Sundays was banned. Separation of state and religion ceased to exist: Fiji was declared a Christian state. I think that there was no one more baffled by this than my mother. She frequently said, “We follow the Hindu faith. So why should we be forced to obey the Sabbath? It doesn’t make sense, Kalyana. Before the missionaries came, they weren’t Christians, either. Have they forgotten?” Her voice sounded wrung with a new kind of sorrow.

  Further changes on the people of Fiji were imposed. A curfew of eight in the evening was set. Soldiers with large guns strutting along village streets became commonplace. Senseless violence erupted in every corner of Fiji, whether town or village, and no residents were immune. Poor and rich, young and old, healthy and feeble—everyone moved in wide-eyed terror of what might happen. As the months passed, the separation between the indigenous Fijians and Fiji-born Indians grew increasingly wider.

  Fiji-born Indian women were beaten and disrobed in the middle of the towns. Pitifully, Lord Krishna was not there to elongate their unraveling saris; the women could only run naked or in torn brassieres and panties, screaming with shame and pain as they took cover in deserted buildings and empty stores.

  There were threats of bombs in every Indian-dominated school, even minor explosions. It became a common sight to see Indian mothers and fathers rushing from their daytime jobs and commitments to rescue their sons and daughters from elementary or secondary schools. Fear, like the black clouds billowing from schools and buildings, darkened the villages and city streets. All of Fiji lay under its choking hold.

  This sent a chain of reactions through other parts of the world. Fiji, for the first time in its century-old history with the British, was expelled from the Commonwealth. Britain, America, Australia, and New Zealand suspended aid.

  My mother telephoned me to tell me that Kunti had been scrubbing green mildew off her concrete steps on a Sunday, when the military came and took her by the hair. They cleaned the concrete with her face, leaving splatters of blood. A tall soldier stood on a wooden platform and said, “Let this be a warning to all of you. No work is to be done on Sundays. It’s the new law for a new Fiji.”

  My mother had always worried enough for everyone in the family. And yet now, a different mood had overtaken her, eclipsing every part of the woman I had once known. For now she was without hope, hope for her children and grandchildren. What life could her children’s children have when the world we had always known had been turned upside down?

  “For more than a century, Kalyana, for more than a century we have labored for this country. We have built houses and bridges and businesses and schools. We have rooted for this country in soccer and rugby games played around the world. When do we get to call this our home? When?” And then she wept, crushed. It was something I had only seen when Manjula stood on her doorstep, for that last time, and said her final goodbye.

  My mother had always been one to exaggerate and magnify grief, yet I came to understand that, this time, perhaps she spoke with truth. And so it was that, just as a fleet of hard-working Indians boarded British ships and came to Fiji more than a century ago, so in 1989 a crowd of their defeated descendants boarded airplanes and fled Fiji with suitcases full of dreams, seeking hope for the future. Kirtan and I were among them.

  As I packed the few belongings we were taking with us to this new life, I pondered Fiji, the forgotten paradise. What had Pope John Paul said about our country once? “It’s the way the world should be.” As I carefully folded Kirtan’s shirts and pants and stacked them upon my dresses, I came to realize that we had become a part of history, a pattern that had been repeated for centuries upon centuries. For this was no different than a British Sergeant-Superintendent standing over the Indians with a whip in his hand; it was no different than men towering over women for centuries, denying them the right to vote or own property. It was the same story as the punishment Tulsi’s husband continually gave her; and most significantly, to me at least, it was no different than the torture Uncle Baldev had inflicted upon me or the silence my mother had imposed on me afterwards. For the first exercised dominance and power over the latter.

  Nor were pain and suffering, loss and sacrifice, merely the lot of a woman, as my mother had told me that terrible afternoon. For there was a greater truth: every life, regardless of skin color, place of origin, birth rights, status, and, yes, gender, was entwined with pain and suffering. There was no escaping it. But if we tried to stand tall amidst the chaos and to contemplate, looking inward, we could perhaps learn the lessons and look beyond into a brighter future.

  As Kirtan’s family drifted in and out of our flat to bid their goodbyes over the course of our last week in Fiji, I cleaned the walls, swept the floors, and prepared for our departure. I could not allow myself to walk outdoors and see the flowers: marigolds, buttercups, frangipani, bougainvillea, and hibiscus in bloom. I must not see the coconut trees swaying in the breeze or the butterflies circling the rose bushes. I stopped my ears so that I did not hear the sound of the ocean waves crashing against the eroded seawall. For if I did, I was sure I would convince Kirtan to stay. I was sure I would then be unable to leave the only home I had known.

  My mother helped me to close up the flat, and that
evening my family came to bid Kirtan and me our final farewell. My mother had chattered throughout the day, but when my father came he did not say a word. Quietly he sat in a corner, back against the bare walls, until it was time to leave. I had never seen a grown man cry buckets of tears until that day. He held me close and long, and wept shamelessly for the loss of his child. I knew I was taking a piece of his heart.

  Raju stood back and watched our father weep. Then, to clear the air or perhaps to come to his own understanding of my upcoming departure, he did the usual: He punched me for the last time on each arm, calling me “Kali.” “Take care,” he said, laughing as always. “Be careful how much you eat in Canada. I hear some people over there eat so much that they have to be carried out of their flats with cranes. I don’t want to have to cut the doors when you come back to visit, so that you can fit through them.” His loud chortling made the lizards on the walls perk up their heads.

  I would miss Raju and his foolishness. I told him to find a wife and settle down before he turned into a flabby, flaccid old man who wasn’t desired by anyone. My brother flexed his biceps and said, “See, Sis—strong and young. That’s what I’ll always be.” He grinned. “Kaaaaaali! Ka Ka Ka Ka Ka Ka Ka Kaaaaali.” I heard his voice echo long after he had walked out into the night.

  When the shelves were packed into boxes and the floors swept and wiped clean of dirt, my mother took me aside. She gently touched my forehead, moving a stray hair. Her eyes found mine, just for a moment. How long had it been? She took my hands in hers and put the small gold snake charm in the center of my palm. “I found this under your mattress, in your old room” she said. “Take it with you. Just in case you need it there.”

  She studied every inch of my face as though she could burn it into her memory. I waited for her to speak, to say something to obliterate the years of pain. I wanted her to talk about the silent moments and the untold tales. I wanted her to hang her head out of a window and scream, scream loudly so that the world could hear, to cry for my silent suffering, and to weep for the years lost and the years gained. To tell me that she loved me, if not more than Raju, then at least an equal amount. I wanted her to tell me that she was proud of who I was and who I was becoming.