Kalyana Page 7

  “The art of telling stories goes back to the beginning of time, Kalyana,” my mother would interrupt my reverie. “And anyone who has this gift is a blessed soul. Read as many stories as your heart desires, my little pumpkin.” I blushed when my mother called me such childish names in public.

  When I had chosen my stack of children’s books, the librarian stamped the return date on a small card glued in the back of each book. I could examine the card at home and know exactly how many times the book had left the ocean with a visiting fish. At first, I only chose the books that were wanted by others, but later I sought out those books that were unwanted and unread. I thought that they also deserved to see the world outside this library.

  As I grew older, I discovered Enid Blyton’s books. The Magic Faraway Tree series became my Ramayana. In the hopes of somehow uncovering the thick-trunked tree that housed Moon-Face, Mr. Whatzisname, Silky, and the noisy Saucepan Man, I often went out in our backyard and knocked on the bark and shook the branches of the mandarin, mango, and carambola trees that crowded together there. Manjula would raise her eyebrows, but I did not want to answer any of her unspoken questions.

  If I had found such a thick-trunked tree, I would have climbed it and rejoiced when I ended up in the Land of Topsy-Turvy or the Land of Spells or the Land of Take-What-You-Want or the Land of Birthdays. Like the strange folk of the Magic Faraway Tree, I wanted to feast on Pop Biscuits and Google Buns and slide down the slippery-slip that spiraled down the tree trunk. I would listen carefully, hoping that deep in the woods I would hear the whisper “Whisha-whisha-whisha”—a sign that the magic faraway tree full of fairies was near. One day I hoped to write stories too, like my favorite author, and hide behind the fantastical heroes and heroines to which I gave birth.

  I searched carefully for any fairies who might be buzzing around the thick vegetation in our backyard, but all I ever found were thin-trunked coconut trees and frogs croaking. The only sound would be the coconut leaves rustling in the wind as the spirits of the departed in the nearby cemetery slept peacefully ten feet below ground.

  Manjula always confiscated each book I borrowed from the library, and I often found her reading them secretly in the middle of the afternoon when all the clothes were ironed and put away. Eventually she grew tired of my selections and began creating her own library from the Mills and Boon and Harlequin Romance novels she would purchase each week. They had pictures of glistening men and curvaceous, long-haired women embracing in the compromised positions that we Indo-Fijians reserved only for our bedrooms. Manjula kept all her novels shut in a cardboard box. She often burned a kerosene lamp by our bedside in the late evening, reading several short chapters before closing her eyes.

  Raju never read books; he spent his time conjuring up useless plans. Once, when I was looking for Mr. Watzisname in our backyard, I saw Raju rise from someone’s grave with a white bedsheet covering his head and scrawny body. He had spent the entire morning searching the house for that white sheet. Now the unsuspecting Fijian women who were crossing the cemetery were screaming, “Spirits have risen! Run, sisters! Run! Spirits have risen! Run!” I saw them sprint out of the graveyard, tripping and tumbling on gravestones, clutching their chests.

  Unfortunately, Raju did not put the same level of commitment into his studies, and soon he tired of school. As a child I was unhappy that he never had to take his handkerchief and a little suitcase and face the grim headmaster of Mahatma Gandhi Primary School. Years later, I realized the gift he had lost.

  While I was engrossed in reading and writing stories or solving mathematical equations, Raju occupied his time with other tasks. He accompanied Father to his shop and helped him with the building of cabinets and chairs and beds, or he strolled to the ocean alongside Manjula. At first, like me, he carried the bags into which Manjula would dump live crabs and prawns. Then he designed his own spear out of metal and wood, sharpening it to perfection and following Manjula’s footsteps. He caught prawns and crabs by marking the sea creatures’ habitats in the sands and brought home his own bag of live catch. Nonetheless, he still left the cutting and cooking of it to Manjula.

  On less-productive occasions, Raju would gather with the neighborhood boys and guzzle large bottles of Fijian beer and smoke Pall Mall cigarettes. Once I even saw him roll tobacco leaves into a rope shape and smoke it. He saw me watching him, winked at me, and said, “Suki.” He reached out his hand and offered me some. I ran to my mother, screaming that Raju was being bad: He was smoking. My mother told me not to tattle, and that Raju was a boy. “Go and read, Kalyana,” Mother said, shutting out my cries.

  Raju progressed from smoking suki to sitting in a circle like the native Fijians and drinking yaqona or kava from a bilo, a cup made from a half coconut shell smoothed to perfection. The drink looked like muddy, slushy water. Raju accepted the bilo, clapped once, said “Bula!” and drank it in one gulp. He handed the bilo to his friends, clapped three times, and said “Vinaka vaka levu,” or “Thank you” in Fijian.

  Then he started disappearing for several days at a time. He would come home with disheveled hair and an unkempt shirt, smelling like cigarettes. The talk in the village was that he was educating himself on the physics of the birds and the bees using a permissive older Fijian woman who had borne three children to three different fathers. She lived in a nearby village and grew her own dalo and cassava roots to feed her family.

  Sometimes Raju would bring home cassava and dalo leaves. My mother would cook the dalo leaves in creamy coconut milk, calling it rou-rou. Soaking the cassava in wet curry spices and deep-frying them, she would seal their softness in the crispy outside. She never asked Raju the source of the food, and she would bat her hands in disdain were anyone to raise the rumor of her dear son embracing a full-blooded Fijian woman.

  And so I came to understand at an early age that men had an advantage in this world. They never bled. They need not attend school. And, if they so desired, they might learn certain pleasures without the pundit’s matrimonial blessings. No one would blink an eye, though the village women might whisper among themselves. It seemed that all boys might sow their wild oats, while girls must stay home and sew dresses. Women, especially Indian women, embraced the fate that was handed down to them, keeping their mouths sealed as they trudged along and prepared curries and pressed clothes. I began to wish that I had been born in the land of America, where women were allowed to go mad. Perhaps being under the influence was a good thing after all.

  “You read, Kali,” Raju would tell me. “That way you can get a better husband—one that doesn’t beat you that much, just on the weekends.”

  Raju was a hopeless case.

  9

  I had a dream: I was wearing my yellow school uniform and carrying my little suitcase full of schoolbooks. The sun was sinking in the wide sky, creating a warm orange hue around me. The scent of roses, marigolds, hibiscuses, and frangipani perfumed the air.

  I kept my feet firmly pressed on the concrete outside our house. Next to the house, on my right, was a tall lime tree. Or was it my house? We didn’t own a lime tree or flowers, nor did we have a concrete driveway. I shook my head in confusion.

  The scent of lime hung thickly in the muggy air. A bright light drew me closer to the tree, and it seemed as though a cannon filled with fairy dust had exploded around its thin branches. As I approached, I clutched tightly to the handle of my little suitcase, hoping that I might witness the fairies I had dreamed of for so long.

  But when I reached the tree, what I saw quickened the pace of my heart. I dropped my suitcase to the ground. I wanted to run, to scream, to flee, but I could not move. My body had turned stiff like a cold stone statue, my scream trapped in the hollow of my throat.

  A red, hissing snake had mischievously emerged from the light. It slithered down a thin branch and climbed to another. The swiftness and grace of its movement was terrifying. I stood there staring at it with my mouth open,
gasping for breath. Large beads of perspiration were forming on my brow.

  Then something strange happened. The red snake coiled on top of a thin branch and stared right into my eyes and smiled. It did a little dance and slipped its tail over the branch and hung from it, winking and giggling at me. The scales on the snake’s body were made of hundreds of precious stones that shone and glittered brighter than the sun itself. In spite of myself, my heartbeat began to return to its normal rhythm. The burning heat in my body subsided as I felt a strange sensation of peaceful warmth flow through me.

  The four old women, giggling like adolescents, emerged from nowhere and flew around the tree, circling it. They chanted a melodious tune which urged me to tap my toes in the dirt and roll my shoulders and shake my hips. Then they all reached out and gently touched my head, giving me their blessing.

  By the end of the dream, I knew that I was deeply in love with this snake. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I woke up and found Manjula sleeping peacefully beside me, one of her legs thrown over a large, fluffy pillow. I wondered if I had been gifted this dream in error. Rightfully, I thought, it belonged to her.

  10

  The years following the Independence Day celebrations saw several changes in our home. My father hammered pieces of wood together and raised our mattress from the floor onto a frame. Manjula shoved her little library, her boxes of romance books, under our bed for safekeeping. My father built sturdier chairs and glued a green top onto our dining table.

  “It’ll be easier to clean the food off now,” he told my mother, demonstrating with a wet cloth.

  He built cupboards for the cups and plates, and drawers for the big spoons and sharp knives. Then he brought home a stand on which to dangle our cups and screwed hooks into the wall for our towels.

  Running water found its way into our home. The big tank of water by the side of the house was taken away in a truck to my cousin’s house, where the pipes did not yet bring water. Mother and Manjula no longer had to beat the clothes on the rocks outside; now they could soak them in our new concrete sink.

  With running water also came a modern toilet. The old pit toilet outside was covered with dirt. For the first year, my mother had to keep the toilet door bolted, as Manjula and I became frequent guests of that room. She insisted that we were flushing unnecessarily, making the water bills skyrocket. We had to ask her for the key to visit the toilet, and she became the one who decided whether it was urgent need or just plain curiosity. Sometimes, when it was indeed urgent need and Mother did not believe us, Manjula and I were left squirming in our wooden chairs.

  The ceilings were lined with yards of wire in red, green, blue, and yellow, just like the Ludo game. White, square switches were placed on every wall, and with a flick of one of these switches, light flooded every room of our modest house. When Father bought our first turntable and a radio, Mother reluctantly retired her transistor set. English and Hindi tunes now vibrated through our home. Manjula began singing out of tune in a shrill voice, while my mother would twist her hips and tap her feet on the wooden floors. She would ask me to come and do “the twist.” On most days, I would decline her invitation and remain in bed reading, a stack of condensed-milk sandwiches and a tall glass of Milo handily by my side.

  The final big change came when a group of men from the village arrived at our house. Every sunrise, they lined up at our door and helped my father stir concrete powder, sand, gravel, and water in large drums. They dug the dirt in front of our home into a downward slope. Then they laid metal frames on the ground and stacked cement blocks on top of one another along the sides of the slope. A ton of gray concrete mixture was poured into the holes of the cement blocks, creating our new concrete driveway.

  I thought of my dream of the laughing red snake.

  Raju, as usual, was nowhere to be found, but this time he disappeared for the entire week this transformation was taking place. The four old women whispered amongst themselves. The third old woman, who burned hotter than fire itself, said that the Fijian woman with whom Raju was locking lips was quite large in size. Rumor was that her hips were rounder than a ten-pound watermelon. The fourth old woman disagreed. Her hips weren’t like a watermelon, but more like a juicy pineapple, and her breasts were like two small mangoes. The second old woman, who possessed the fluidity and clarity of water, had her own opinion: pineapples had eyes, and a woman’s hips could never be compared to this fruit. The woman who was wrapping her plump legs around Raju’s scrawny back had hips shaped like an apple. But then the first woman, the one who blew in from the East, spoke. She said it didn’t matter whether the woman’s hips were shaped like a watermelon or a pineapple or an apple. It made no difference what fruit her breasts resembled. Regardless of what form she took, a woman was a woman.

  All four women raised their hands in the air and shouted, “A woman is a woman! God bless Raju’s soul! God bless Raju’s soul!” I shoved white cotton balls in both my ears to silence the rumors, but the voices of the four old women still echoed in my head.

  Every day the men were there working, shirtless and sweating in the burning heat, my mother cooked a large pot of lentil soup and rice. She would taste the lentils several times for salt and tang before she would allow Manjula to take the food out to the men. Manjula would walk with an extra sway of her hips, wearing a kurta that showed a particularly visible amount of cleavage. She would bend low when she handed out bowls of rice and lentil soup.

  “No problem. No problem. No problem,” Manjula would reply eagerly, brushing away their gratitude. “If you need more salt, more water, more juice, just holler.” She would flash her brightest smile.

  Some of the men would come closer to her, take her hand in theirs, and say, “You’re very kind, Sister. Thank you. Thank you.”

  Manjula would blush and walk swiftly back into the house, giggling uncontrollably like a school-age girl. My mother would shake her head and grin at Manjula. Unlike Manjula, my mother never came out of the house. These men were not brothers or fathers or husbands, not even uncles or cousins.

  It took several weeks before all the work was completed. The final stage came when a tall man leveled the wet cement with a flat tool, leaving our new garage smooth and ready for the car that my father would soon proudly park in our driveway. After that, to Manjula’s dismay, I was sure, the strong young men never returned. My aunt was left alone with her library of Mills and Boons.

  Yet things were changing for Manjula, too. Word of my father’s booming furniture-making business had reached small towns far and wide, bringing Manjula her first suitor. He was a short, plump man with a thick mustache, a full head of black hair, and a large, hideous mole on the right side of his cheek. He did not look like the prince in the fairy tale, but Manjula was enthralled. The meeting was arranged for two o’clock in the afternoon, at a neutral place. The gossip was that he was aware of Manjula’s limp, but he still insisted on meeting her in person. He was looking for a wife who came from a prosperous family.

  Both families were to meet at the house of my father’s older brother. My father had only one brother, Baldev. Even though he carried a name similar to my father’s, he looked nothing like him; Uncle Baldev had dark hair and dark eyes and dark skin. His house was in Nausori, a farming town a half-hour’s drive from Suva.

  Uncle Baldev had been married the same time as my father, but to a girl who was even younger than my mother. I had overheard Mother and Manjula speaking about her in whispered voices. Her eyes had looked like empty sponges and she was praying for her first bleeding when the wedding procession knocked on her door and her hand was joined with my uncle’s. The first old woman, the one who blew in from the East, shuddered upon hearing the story. “It is no wonder,” she growled like a howling hurricane, “that the girl turned out to be a banj.”

  A banj? Indeed, the old woman insisted. Still a child when frangipani was spread on white bedsheets and flowers w
ere hung from the ceilings, the poor soul had yet to soak the cloth rags with her blood. Her nipples were mere buds, not yet open and spread like rose petals.

  “What a pity!” the old women cried. “The damage was done. It’s no wonder she can never bear children.”

  Is that why she kept her face half-covered by the fabric of her cotton sari? My mother called her “Didi.” That couldn’t be her name, for “Didi” only meant “sister.” Did not each woman at least have one name of her own? I realized that I never had heard this woman speak a single word.

  Manjula limped around our house in a dither. She went from mirror to mirror, putting her hair up this way and that.

  “Bun,” said my mother firmly. “It brings out your strong facial features. And it makes you look very Indian.” So Manjula soon had a tight bun at the back of her neck, but she was still undecided over the saris.

  Mother stepped in again. “Oh, Sister! Why would you wear red? You’re not a bride yet. Wear the gold one with the maroon border,” she said. “And all the gray hairs,” my mother continued. “Men, young and old, only want young, little girls. He will for sure reject you when he sees those gray hairs. Come here. Let me put kajal in your head.”

  Kajal was only to be dropped in the waterline of one’s eyes, yet here was Manjula using it to disguise her appearance! I stared as Mother blended kajal with great expertise into Manjula’s hair. Almost miraculously, the gray hairs blended and disappeared.

  Manjula rouged her cheeks and colored her lips a bright maroon, matching the border of her sari. She sat at the dining table in the kitchen, listening to the ticking hands of the round clock on the far wall. She didn’t eat or drink or even speak, but awkwardly played with the edges of her gold sari. And yet she looked so beautiful, almost like one of those princesses I had read about in the books of fairy tales. Perhaps Manjula was finally to have her prince after all.