The Toss of a Lemon (44 page)

As Janaki listens, she pretends to tap out the beat structure, the
taalam,
of the song on her lap. She has seen knowledgeable listeners do this, tapping the front and back of their hands, and each of their fingers, in arcane and particular orders.

When Vani has finished playing in the morning, she eats her meal. Janaki eats hers at the same time, not least because Vani talks while she eats. She never talks at any other time, and even at this time, no one—except, now, Janaki—really listens. Sivakami comes in and out with food, but not appearing to pay attention to the daily discourse.

Vani’s method is to tell, on average, a different story each week, repeating it daily with small variations. She often draws from her childhood, telling tales of grandeur and aristocracy. Her uncles are lawyers and ministers; her father is rich. Their house in Pandiyoor is full of music, culture, the latest fashions in clothes, slang, comportment. Most of the time, since Vani doesn’t speak, it’s difficult to tell that she is the product of such a home, but when she does, the influences are obvious.

After a week or so, however, Vani will change the story—fundamentally, but not superficially: most of the details will remain the same, but the moral import or the conclusion will be entirely different, all the pleasant people might become rude and the mean ones heroic. Once, for instance, it was a story of how a wedding was almost stopped by a death; in the variant, the death was almost stopped by the wedding. After delivering this reversal, she stops telling that story, and goes on to another one.

Janaki is as often confused by Vani’s stories as by her music, but she never asks questions. She knows that questioning will get her nowhere with her aunt. She must find other ways.

As Janaki is currently the pre-school-age child in Sivakami’s house, she is looked after by Muchami for much of the day. After his morning chores and mid-morning meal, he goes to his own small house and neighbourhood. Janaki goes with him, as the youngest child in Sivakami’s care always has, and runs through dust and groves while he naps, gossips and has a cup of
ragi
porridge with his mother.

Sivakami’s grandchildren will each have a very different memory of his or her pre-school months in Muchami’s care. Saradha will remember organizing Muchami’s nieces and nephews into games whose rules they continually broke or forgot—deliberately, she felt. Visalam will remember the whole time as a series of unbelievably funny mishaps. Laddu will forget most things about this epoch, though he will retain the rudiments of gambling, acquired while practically losing his shirt to Muchami’s young nephews day after day. (Muchami made them return to him whatever they won.) Laddu will also never forget the most effective ways of tormenting chickens, though he will not remember having learned them. Sita will recall Muchami’s small relatives as snotty-nosed, insipid, illmannered, repulsive, his neighbourhood as offensive.

Janaki will forever regard this epoch as the happiest of her childhood. In the late morning, each day, Muchami finds her squatting in one of the garden doorways, listening to or thinking about Vani’s story. If the story is not finished, he waits; if it is, he whistles from the courtyard and Janaki comes trotting out to meet him. As they walk, they ask each other questions about things they see or have been thinking about.

“Janaki-baby, why is it that the dust of our Cholapatti roads is so red?” he might ask as they exit the Brahmin quarter, the big houses falling away, replaced by mud huts with thatched roofs.

“I don’t know,” Janaki might reply, trotting to keep up. “Do you think it’s because the sun stains it when it comes up in the morning?”

“Never thought of that.” Muchami squints penetratingly at a field—one of Sivakami’s tenants.

“Yeah, and the night stains it black, did you ever look?” Janaki is starting to pant.

“Ah, yes.” Muchami crouches so that she can put her arms around his neck and he can piggyback her the rest of the way.

“And, Muchami, what happens to notes of music when they disappear
^?
” she asks from his back.

“I can’t say I ever thought about it,” he admits. “Did you ever try following one?”

“I ... don’t think so.” She wishes she could see his face—is he serious?

So they agreeably pass the journey, stopping if he has work he must do en route from her home to his, whereupon she is released to her recreation, and he to his rest. After an hour or so, she creeps into his hut and lies down beside him to take a nap herself. At the afternoon’s end, they make a return journey.

By then, Janaki’s siblings are returning from school, ravenous. They pluck tiny bananas from the stalk that always leans, drooling sap, in the pantry corner, the ripening bananas winding up it like stairs. Sivakami gives each child a cup of milk and a globe of
thaingai maavu,
coconut ground with palm sugar and lentil flour and formed into a ball with the adhesive of a little milk. Fortified, the children go about their business until nightfall.

Vani, who rests upstairs for some time after her morning meal, comes down to wash her face and comb her hair about the same time the children and Janaki return. She then has Muchami carry her veena up onto the roof, where Vairum has erected an awning for her, and there plays hot and vigorous afternoon ragas until the sun goes down.

While Vani conducts her afternoon session, Janaki sits in the chalky-smelling cool at the top of the stairwell. Sometimes she’s permitted to remain there, sometimes lured or forced away by other happenings in the house. This is the hour when Laddu has his tutorials, for example. If Vairum is tutoring him, Janaki stays away. She tried, once, to take part, but it didn’t go well.

Vairum and Laddu had been sitting down to work in the main hall, Vairum glaring dismissively at Laddu, who fidgeted nervously with his books and slate.

Vairum lobbed an opening, his mind clearly already on his tennis. “What’s news, Laddu? Fail any tests today?”

Janaki had already figured out that whatever school is, Laddu is not very good at it. The boy made no attempt to return the volley. Vairum served a few more, underhanded. “What if your parents never have another boy? You’ll have to support them all alone. You must feel very ashamed and frightened, being the first boy and not having a future. Well, there is always your grandmother’s money, and my help, of course.”

Janaki, listening to this from one of the doorways to the garden, felt a response was merited and looked to her older brother to see what he would say. Laddu scratched at a peeling patch on his slate. He didn’t even look worried, just dull and patient.

Janaki piped up. “Actually, Laddu Anna’s going to do a big job and be very rich.”

Vairum had started to laugh and Janaki felt encouraged.

“Laddu Anna’s pockets will be so full of gold,” she improvised, “that his shorts will always be falling down and his bum will show, but no one will laugh because they’ll all be sad because he’s so much richer than they are. Yep. That’s what’s going to happen.”

Vairum had laughed harder, then stopped on a single snort and fixed her with a look. “Oh, ho, is that how it will be? Good. Very glad to hear that.”

Janaki looked to her brother for approval.

“What nonsense is this?” Laddu snarled. “Get out of here before I beat you!”

He shoved her toward the garden while Vairum said to him in much the same tone, “And I want to see some sums before I beat them out of you, get it?”

The episode left a bad taste in Janaki’s mouth, and she treated herself to a mouthful of dirt from the garden. She passed Muchami, wrestling with a rogue plaintain tree. Pretending to examine the rose-bush, she scooped a rich, moist handful from among the roots and swallowed quickly, barely bothering to chew. Licking morsels of earth from her baby molars, she went from there to visit with the calves.

Janaki never tried to get near one of Vairum’s tutorial sessions again.

During Sanskrit lessons, however, Janaki sits with Muchami, in one of the garden doorways. The teacher sings out the slokas and she sings out her version of them—Laddu has told her she’s yelling gibberish, but she thinks she sounds pleasing and accurate. Muchami is far less assertive in his responses, and one would suppose Janaki’s high-volume participation wouldn’t help him, but he never objects to her presence and always compliments her afterward on the subtlety of her pronunciation. Sometimes Sanskrit even enters their midday to and fro.

“That last sloka, Janaki: how does it affect the meaning that it’s on an upward instead of a downward tilt, at the end?” he puzzles one day. “I keep wanting to do it downward.”

“I was thinking about the very same thing.” Janaki purses her lips. “It sounds more like birdsong the way it is.”

“Quite right and well put, but is that the point?” Muchami challenges, smiling.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Janaki’s brow is furrowed. “We’ll have to ask Kesavan Master tomorrow.”

A few times, she really did try to ask Kesavan. That was another mistake. Kesavan is willing to put up with Janaki’s participation because her presence has injected Muchami with some greater degree of commitment, if no greater competence. But he’ll not stoop to ridiculing the ancient tongue because the granddaughter of the house sees it as a lark. After a couple of barked responses, Janaki learns quickly to confine her questioning—on Sanskrit, on nature, on anything, really—to Muchami, the only person in the household who sees her questions as worthwhile.

She has also learned to confine her questions to times and places when her elder sister Sita will not overhear her. It had happened once, that, in a good mood, Janaki had called out to Muchami as he ate his tiffin, “Muchami, when a bunch of stick insects get together, do they make a tree?”

Before Muchami could answer, Sita, walking past, had supplied a response. “Sure, the same tree your wooden head fell off of.”

Seeing Janaki absorbed in Vani’s music, Sita chitters from the bottom of the stairs or the pantry until Janaki can’t help but look.

“Janaki, this is you,” Sita says, and makes an expression like a monkey sunk, drunk, in a pile of rotting fruit, batting her hand idiotically against her knee.

While Janaki earnestly sits by Muchami’s side, singing out her phrases of “Sanskrit,” Sita parades past in the garden and yodels perfect imitations.

So now, when Sivakami tells Janaki she must come back early from Muchami’s because the tailor is coming to measure her for a school uniform, Sita clarifies, “Amma wants to make sure you have a uniform because then you’ll blend in even though you don’t know anything.”

“Blend in to what?” Janaki frowns.

“The rest of the know-nothing babies, what do you think?” Sita smiles her perverse smile and leaves for school.

“What happens at school, Muchami?” she asks that afternoon.

“Well, you know I’ve never got past the door, Janaki-baby,” he explains, “but I imagine it’s all the things you like, writing and reading and learning, only more and you can do it all day and all the other children are doing the same.”

That sounds all right. Janaki likes the idea of the uniform, also. And Muchami is making her a new slate.

She goes to tell the calves her news. From the cowshed, Janaki hears Sivakami talking to Vairum in the courtyard. Vairum is washing his hands at the well following his own morning meal.

“Have you given it any more thought, kanna?” asks Sivakami. “I think we must pledge another—”

“I never said we shouldn’t,” he cuts her off efficiently.

“I ... okay, I’ll look up which is a good day.” Sivakami goes to take the almanac down from the ledge in the hall where it is kept, about six feet off the ground, so she must stand on a small stool to reach it. Janaki watches from the kitchen doorway.

“I want to do the puja at home, for our Ramar,” Vairum says, slowly now.

“Good, kanna.” Sivakami squints through the thick, wavy-paged book. “Next Friday is auspicious.” She spots Janaki. “That would also be a good day for Janaki to start school. Janaki-baby, we’ll do a puja for you to start school, next Friday.”

The tailor comes to take Janaki’s measurements. She starts to feel important.

Preparations begin for the puja. Supplies are bought for sweets, for example, and their manufacture begun.

The tailor returns to fit the uniform.

“Will I wear the uniform for my puja?” Janaki asks her grandmother.

“No, kanna, we do the puja for your uniform, your slate, your books, put it all in front of goddess Saraswati, right? Ask for her blessings so you will study well. You can wear your usual paavaadai, and then put on your uniform afterward.”

“Can I wear a silk paavaadai?”

“If you like, yes. You feel like wearing something special?”

“Yeah.”

Janaki was pretty sure she had heard her uncle and grandmother discussing a puja for the Ramar, not Saraswati. Things sometimes, often, change out of her hearing, hard as she tries to keep on top of all household developments. They must have decided it’s more appropriate to do the puja for Saraswati, the goddess of learning, all things considered. Yes, that must be it.

Friday morning arrives. As her grandmother returns from the Kaveri, Janaki awakens and informs Muchami she didn’t sleep a wink all night for excitement. She bathes and puts on a paavaadai, teal silk bordered in yellow. She hears her grandmother instructing Sita to bathe and dress, and reminding Vani, also, that today is the day of the puja. Vairum has gone to bathe at the river, something he does only on big occasions. This school matter is even bigger than she had realized, thinks Janaki. The uniform had been delivered the day before and is ready to be blessed, together with her slate, ink powder, writing stick and nib, paper, books and a new tiffin box engraved with her name, G. Janaki.

Sivakami sees her come in from her bath and asks, “All ready, Janaki? Come, the
raahu
kaalam, the inauspicious hour, has just ended and the good hours begun. Let us do your puja now, before the priest arrives.”