The Henna Artist(55)
Guests began arriving. Since it was tradition to invite every neighbor to ceremonies with a box of sweets (whether you knew them or not), Malik had dropped off boxes at everyone’s doorstep. They were the first to arrive, curious to meet us and to get a firsthand glimpse of the new house on the street.
Radha and I were both delighted to welcome Mr. and Mrs. Pandey from our former lodgings at Mrs. Iyengar’s. I suspected that, like me, Radha had a small crush on Sheela Sharma’s handsome music teacher.
Mr. and Mrs. Iyengar came, too. My former landlady made a show of examining the premises and wrinkled her snub nose. “The courtyard certainly makes such a small house more tolerable.”
I smiled at the rebuke. Nothing was going to spoil my mood today.
I had not mentioned this celebration to my ladies. It would not have been fitting for me to invite them to my home—so much more humble than theirs. But Radha must have let it slip to Kanta because I saw my sister leap up to greet Kanta and Manu and usher them into the courtyard. With a stab of envy, I thought Radha never showed such enthusiasm when I came into a room. It reminded me that the gap between us had widened since she started attending the Maharani School a few months ago.
Kanta appeared cheerful even though the hollows under her eyes were dark. Manu helped ease her onto a blanket. I asked Kanta how she was feeling as it had been several weeks since I had seen her. She hadn’t felt well enough to keep our appointments.
“Except for reading and riding in moving vehicles, both of which I like to do very, very fast, all’s well. Oh, and also sleeping and eating are an issue!” she cackled.
As guests made themselves comfortable and soft-voiced conversations continued, the priest began dropping laurel leaves into the clay pot of ghee. He then lit them with a match, and prodded the flame. Without skipping a beat in his repetitions of Om Ganapati Namah, he pointed to the virgin incense stub, and one of his assistants hurried to light it. The unexpected combination of scorching camphor, ghee and sandalwood was musky, sweet, bitter and rich at the same time—the scents of past ceremonies, long forgotten.
I thought of my marriage years ago, the hasty ritual, the pandit complaining that he could barely afford the ghee with the fee he was being offered. No chura ceremony for my uncles to slide bangles on my arm and give me money, for I had no uncles. Pitaji struggling to stay upright, the yellows of his eyes red-veined from drink. Maa shooing flies from the meager platters of pilao, samosas, subjis and sweets.
With my red wedding sari shielding my face, I’d cried and cried, amazed I still had tears left after arguing with Maa for five straight days: Did Maa not need me to help to teach the school when Pitaji was absent? Was fifteen so very old to still be at home? Who would roast and grind the gram after I left? Who would bring water from the well?
Maa was gentle, but firm. She was brought up to obey her parents and her husband, not to defy, question or contradict. She told me Pitaji’s books had filled my head with too many silly ideas. They had given me the useless notion that I could make my own decisions. As a daughter, my job was to marry the man my parents chose for me, as she had. She was as powerless to change that age-old tradition as I was. Besides, there was no money to keep me at home.
I glanced at Maa’s neck, where her gold chain used to hang and where the groove it had carved would always be a reminder of what she had sacrificed, and knew that to be true.
But I also knew that as soon as I married, I would become jaaya—my husband taking birth in my womb in the form of future children. And once there were children, there would be no more I or me, only we and them. So often I’d begged my namesake, the goddess Lakshmi, to hear my pleas—I’m hungry for the knowledge of three Swaraswatis! Let me see the wider world before shutting me inside a small life. But, as always, she’d held up her delicate hands in apology: It’s the way it has always been.
It would have been so much sweeter to share today’s ceremony with my parents. I would have seated them in the place of pride—in the front of the pandit—and introduced them to my guests, fed them rich burfi with my own hands, cooled their faces with khus-khus fans—
The rustling beside me brought me back to the ceremony. Radha was holding a chunni to her nose as if the fragrance of the altar was too strong. She rose, weaving toward the privy. It was the third time in an hour she had done so.
Malik met her as she came out, whispered in her ear, then ran to the mutki to get her a drink of water. It was only April, but she was fanning her face as if the heat were unbearable. Malik handed her the tumbler. She took a sip and blanched. I blamed myself. The packing and cleaning of the last few days, school, the chores for our henna business—it had been too much for her.
When she returned to her seat, I noticed she’d rinsed her face—the tendrils on her forehead were damp and her cheeks pink. She looked so different from the dusty, hollow-cheeked girl I’d first met just six months ago. Now, her face looked as ripe as a mango in June. She even carried herself differently—shoulders back, neck long. She walked with a surer step. The pageboy suited her oval face. Her village diction was less noticeable; she’d dropped double words like small-small and far-far. The other day she used a word—what was it? Antediluvian?—and I had to ask her the definition. It made me proud—how easily she picked things up.
Pandit-ji poured sesame seeds, whole wheat and red paste into the small fire, dousing it. Smoke curled up into the open sky. He wrapped banana leaves around the warm pot, and turned to hand it to me. But I nodded at Radha. I knew she would enjoy being the bearer. She bit her lower lip and smiled shyly as she lifted the pot to her head. Then she rose carefully and went into the empty house to disinfect and purify it.