The Toss of a Lemon (67 page)

“Like the family of my dear brother-in-law?” Vairum is not about to permit his mood to be spoiled. “This is not such a family. Much of their wealth, I believe, is tied up in this charitable trust they have the responsibility for running. They are good Brahmins, Amma.” He smiles at her, and she looks away from a wicked glint in his gaze. “Surely you appreciate that I have ensured that for your sake.”

Sivakami has said all she is capable of saying. Vairum will do what he wants. Marriages, she thinks, are made in heaven.

Vairum, in a rare conciliatory mood, unintentionally echoes Sivakami’s thoughts. “It’s in God’s hands, Amma. Let’s settle it like we did my marriage. First reason, then religion. This is how to make marriages in the new world. Pay attention.”

On an auspicious day shortly after, Janaki undertakes a visit to the Rathnagirishwarar hill temple with Vairum and Sivakami. Just as in Vairum’s case those many years ago, they have taken a plate full of offerings and two small paper packages of roughly equal size. One contains a white flower, which would signify a bad choice; the other has a red flower, a positive sign. Vairum insisted on organizing the offerings just as he has everything else. Sivakami makes a surreptitious survey of the plate. He doesn’t seem to have forgotten anything.

The priest, completing the puja, holds the plate out to them, admirably unconcerned with his words and actions, apart from an appraising look flicked at the girl whose fate clearly hangs in the offerings’ balance. Vairum reaches out to choose a flower, but Sivakami clucks, and he pulls back his hand with an evanescent pout as she nods at Janaki. Janaki’s hand hovers over the plate a moment as she glances at her uncle and then chooses one of the two packets. The priest hands the plate back to Sivakami. Janaki awaits further instructions.

“Open the packet, Janaki!” Vairum says, awfully jolly. “It’s in God’s hands now!”

Janaki unwraps the packet she has chosen and a red mass of petals unfurls in her palm, covering exactly the dot of henna, now faded to a deep orange, which Kamalam had patted onto her hand for the girl-seeing.

God must be on Vairum’s side. He snatches up the other packet and sets it alight on the nearest oil lamp. Left hand on right wrist, he respectfully offers the flaming packet to the altar, giving it back to God. None but God will ever know its contents.

Janaki, her fate decided, begins picturing herself with Baskaran. His height matches hers well. She can’t remember his eyes but she thinks they were kind. He spoke five or six words. Each one is burned in her mind—even though she was of two minds that day. He wore scent.

Kamalam awaits her on the roof and they go over every detail without restraint, Kamalam swallowing her sadness in deference to Janaki’s hoped-for happiness, even giggling guiltily at Dhoraisamy’s manner and the mother-in-law’s girth. By the time they get to the topic of the groom, they are a little giddy with anxiety and confidences.

“His skin is very fair,” Kamalam judges.

Janaki says slowly, “Yes, he’s very fair.”

This is suddenly, illogically, very funny. “He’s fair!” they say. “He’s so fair! Oh, he’s so fair,” laughing until they are heaving and gasping on the floor, holding their cramping guts, resting their forehead on the shadowed strip along the roof’s western edge.

Janaki sits up and leans against the parapet.

“Well, he is,” she sniffs.

It’s too soon. They’re off again, choking tears, aching guts, and the big hot sun gone down.

SOME SIX WEEKS LATER, Sivakami receives her invitation, just like everyone else on the Brahmin quarter—and elsewhere in the presidency, and possibly beyond. Vairum has associates everywhere now. He’s putting Cholapatti on the map, as empire builders have always done for their hometowns, even if he seems to be doing it more to spite his origins than to commemorate them.

Printed in Madras on pumpkin-coloured paper so thick and soft one could sew clothes from it, in royal purple ink with a stylized Ganesha stamped in gilt, the invitation includes both a Tamil and an English version, confirming that there must be foreigners on the guest list. Anyone would be pleased to receive it, and indeed, almost every family that does receive one saves it. What it says is this:

Sivakami is disappointed though unsurprised that Vairum has issued the invitations in his name instead of Goli’s. They have heard from Goli only once since Thangam’s death, when he came to Sivakami’s house for an hour and made noise about how it was time for Laddu to come and work for him. Goli did not look well. He had lost weight, so that his eyes and jaw seemed overly prominent and his clothes, old and expensive, were a bit big to flatter him the way they did when he was younger. It was midday and Laddu was out at the oil processing plant. He grew impatient and left. Sivakami never told Laddu and Goli never returned. Laddu has done well at the plant, against all expectations. Vairum has promoted him to overseer and Laddu would have been very ill-advised to leave.

“Perhaps,” Sivakami speculates aloud, to Muchami, showing him the invitation, “perhaps Vairum didn’t even know how to contact Goli?”

“Not likely, Amma.” Muchami shakes his head. “Vairum could probably find anyone in the presidency. Didn’t you say the invitation says your son-in-law is now in Indrapuram?” Muchami pauses, either to decide how plainly he should speak or to let his words sink in. “In fact, I’m sure Vairum might even have sent Goli an invitation, if only to provoke him. He didn’t make the invitation in Goli’s name because this is his show.”

“People in our Brahmin quarter are going to think Vairum is trying to slap Goli in the face,” Sivakami says, rueful.

“He is, but I think that’s only a side benefit.”

Sivakami looks at him.

“I don’t mean to make a bad joke.” He holds his hands up, conciliatory. “Amma, Vairum is doing something good for Thangam’s daughter. Accept this. He is doing as much for Janaki as if she were his own daughter.”

Sivakami wishes she could not see the wisdom in what he says, but he is right: Vairum is doing more for Thangam’s children than her own brothers ever did for him and Thangam.
He is a better man
, she thinks.

“Amma,” Muchami goes on slowly, “I have a concern.” He has never talked to her in much detail about Goli’s deal-making and is nervous to do so now, but feels he must. “I suspect that, as soon as Goli receives the invitation, he will be in Pandiyoor, trying to raise support for some investments. I’m sure Janaki’s future in-laws are cautious people. But they may feel shy to say no, and then...” He has speeded up and pauses. “There’s nothing like money matters to cause familial discord. I would hate for them to take a financial loss out on the girl. They think very highly of her, as highly as she deserves.”

Sivakami is flummoxed. She never would have thought of this. She feels slow and he waits, giving her time to think through what he has said. “I absolutely do not want them to think that investing with him is a condition of the marriage,” she says after some minutes.

“Yes, that’s exactly one of my fears,” Muchami responds.

“Vairum is so explosive when it comes to his brother-in-law,” she continues. “I would rather we not go to him about this.”

“Okay. Perhaps it won’t be necessary.” Muchami scratches his chin and his scalp. “What about this? Can we somehow inform the son-in-law that while Janaki’s future family appears well-off, we have just learned that they are in fact in a very bad position financially? That they may well say they want to invest with him, but that he should beware, because they are wily—lawyers, after all—and will take him for all he is worth? That they are going down and he should be careful not to be dragged down with them?”

“We cannot say that ourselves,” Sivakami objects. “He will ask why we are marrying his daughter to these people.”

“Good, quite right—so who would he believe?” Muchami asks, like a schoolteacher, as if he knows the answer. He gives a hint. “Who would be only too happy to believe and pass on such a story, but be unlikely to pass it on to anyone else?” He pauses to give Sivakami a chance to respond, but she is silent. “Your brothers, Amma.”

Sivakami frowns, impressed, as he goes on.

“Send them a letter in confidence, saying Vairum heard this from a reliable source after the arrangements had been made, but decided to go through with the wedding, because it’s a good family otherwise, and that he pledged that he will not permit anything bad to happen to his niece. You don’t need to say what they will recognize, that this is exactly what they did for Thangam. But say you are worried about Goli, and want them to talk to him, because it would not be appropriate for you or Vairum to do so. They will be only too glad to have this authority, and even if they spread rumours, those won’t amount to anything more than all the usual rumours that are always in the air about rich families.”

Sivakami has to admit it is an excellent scheme, and as it turns out, Sivakami’s brothers are happy to do their sister this favour. She and Muchami are satisfied that they have done something to ensure harmony for Janaki in her marital home.

Sivakami has insisted that all the basic costs of the wedding be paid for from her money, the manjakkani, which has grown substantially owing to Vairum’s efforts. He agreed but has insisted on paying for extras himself—this is to be a sumptuous celebration, far showier than Sivakami thinks advisable.

The wedding will be not only ostentatious by Sivakami’s lights, but also, paradoxically, short. Efficiency is the hallmark of the new age, even in matters nuptial. A celebration that would have lasted a week in Janaki’s mother’s time will now be completed in three days. People have jobs.

Cholapatti is done up in style. An enormous canopy is erected, covering the entire length of the Brahmin quarter, which will be closed to traffic, from the witch’s house to the temple. All Cholapatti’s Brahmins are invited, as well as a number of wealthy non-Brahmins. They will be sufficiently deferential not to take cooked food in Sivakami’s presence, but the Brahmins are abuzz at Vairum’s urban bad manners nonetheless. Relatives of both sides will descend from all over the Madras Presidency, as well as a number of Vairum’s associates from Madras, including foreigners with whom he does business. Vani will play a recital on the second evening, reprising the program, a little old-fashioned but still charming, of the concert where Vairum first saw her.

Baskaran’s family, as has become the custom in certain circles, has not asked for a dowry, and Vairum has not offered one. Still, Baskaran’s siblings and his parents will receive gifts of clothes and jewellery and Janaki will go to her in-laws with a substantial trousseau of high-quality pots, gold and silver jewellery, silk and blended saris, and other items modern and traditional, representing considerable expense. Sivakami is not sure how she feels about this advance on the old system. On the one hand, she recognizes their lack of demands as a sign of their graciousness. On the other, traditions offer protection. A girl is an asset to her in-laws—a cosmetic, material and moral asset—and a dowry is one way of assuring she is seen as such. If the bride’s side keeps up its end of the bargain, so must the groom’s. Sivakami fears that the loosening of certain controls may lead to the loosening of others, that families who don’t receive dowries may not protect girls as they have been obliged to do in the past.

When she raised this question with Vairum, though, he told her that her knowledge of history and human nature is flawed and incomplete, and that people who take dowries these days are opportunists and not to be trusted. And, as Sivakami observes Baskaran and his family, she finds herself, a little grudgingly, coming to believe that the family is honourable and the match a good one.

Which makes her feel all the odder when Vairum confronts her, late in the afternoon of the third day. The main hall is full of relatives and guests, napping and gossiping, passing the time between meals and major ceremonies. She herself is lying down, in the pantry, her head on her wooden pillow. She hasn’t the energy she once had, and the effort of making the sweets, which she insisted on, has tired her, as has the stream of people coming to pay their respects, and the instructions she has sent out with Janaki, Kamalam and Gayatri, each time the bride has come in to change her clothes and eat.

She feels she has just closed her eyes, when she senses a presence, breathing above her. Her mind flashes briefly—is it a dream?—to the semi-opaque figure she used to see by the river. The last time she saw it was the day she got the news of Thangam’s illness. Then she opens her eyes: Vairum stands over her, black-diamond eyes snapping, nostrils flared. His hair fans like a dark halo around his mottled face, as much white now as brown.