Sacred Waters

by Meira Chand

  At last Sita was helped to stand, to follow her husband around the sacred fire in the symbolic journey of matrimony. She was daubed with the red marks of marriage — the carmine bindi on her forehead and the sindhoor along the parting of her hair. At last her bridegroom placed upon her the wedding garland of sweet-smelling jasmine, making them man and wife. Her husband towered over her, she barely reached his chest, and the wedding sari, draped stiffly about her childish form, appeared to diminish her further. She reached up, struggling to loop the garland she had been given over his wedding turban. As he bent his head to accommodate her, she glimpsed the fleshy contours of his face.

  He was an old man, grey-haired, his fleshy body as firmly bolstered as the horsehair sofa that stood in Kanta Aunty’s house. His small eyes behind an upturned snout of a nose reminded Sita of the baboons that lived in the glade of swaying bamboo not far from the house. Trembling, she tried to back away, but came up against the press of people about her and knew there was nowhere to go.

  Closing her eyes, she remembered her grandmother leading her by the hand to the temple on the banks of the river, and how in the dimness of that place, smelling of dank stone and incense, she had reached to touch the brass bell that called the gods; she remembered its quick sharp chime and how she had folded her hands before the image of the goddess, as her grandmother pushed her head down in obeisance. Tears filled her eyes at the memory, and she focused her thoughts on the devi, holding the image in her mind, praying for the strength grandmother always said the devi gave to those who sought her protection.

  Even as she saw in her mind the goddess’s glowing face, the weapons in her many hands and her tiger steed with its burning amber eyes, she heard a loud collective gasp from the people about her. At her side her husband staggered and clutched his chest, his eyes rolled up beneath his lids until only the whites were visible. As he lurched forward, his weight was thrown against Sita, almost knocking her off her feet. Falling to his knees in his bridal splendour, he writhed about, the gold turban tumbled from his head, his face turned crimson, then blue. A convulsion of loud and strangled sounds gurgled in his throat, foam bubbled from his mouth as he gasped for air. The wedding guests surged forward, shouting advice on how to handle an epileptic fit. Someone sat on the bridegroom’s chest and held him down as he thrashed about, another thrust an old sandal beneath his nose, hoping the rancid odour of sweat and leather might revive the semi-conscious man, already choking on his tongue.

  Sita drew back in horror until she could go no further, and stood flattened against a wall. Sliding down to sit on the floor, she covered her face with her hands, peering through her fingers at the writhing man. Eventually, there was silence. As she looked up the crowd drew back, and Sita saw her husband lying still on the floor before her. The wedding turban had rolled away, revealing the pointed bald dome of his head emerging from a ring of grey hair, like an egg from the warmth of a nest. Everyone turned to stare at Sita. The women began a loud wailing and as the lament rose about her, Sita knew her life had changed yet again, and that she was being blamed for her husband’s death.

  The body was placed on a bench and covered by a sheet. Beneath the shroud the mound of her husband’s belly thrust up to the sky. The gold wedding turban that had rolled from his head was placed again upon him. Escaping the side of the shroud, the flowers of his wedding garland were still fresh and plump. Sita became aware of a low whispering of voices stirring through the crowd, like the sudden rustle of wind in a tree.

  ‘As he lifted the sari, and her eyes fell upon him…’

  ‘…devil…shaitaan…’ The words were repeated about her.

  ‘That creature has eaten her husband, has killed him,’ a woman shouted.

  People crowded about her, dragging her to her feet, their words beating upon her, neutering her of gender, now that she was a widow.

  ‘Aunty,’ she screamed, looking wildly about for her aunt, trying to twist free of the hands that now gripped her.

  At last, through the crowd, she glimpsed her aunt with her husband and daughters, slipping hurriedly out of a door without a backward glance. The wedding was over and Sita was now the property of another household. Fate had unexpectedly turned her from bride to widow, but because the bridegroom had choked to death in the moments after the wedding rituals ended, and not in the moments before, Kanta Aunty was free of further responsibility for Sita, and a hundred witnesses were there to prove it. She knew it was the right moment to leave.

  Even as Sita cried out, the women of her new family took hold of her, dragging her from the wedding hall, pulling her the short distance along the street to the bridegroom’s home. Her hair was knocked loose, the plait unwinding down her back, pins scattering upon the road. The women pressed threateningly about her.

  ‘You no longer need that,’ her mother-in-law shouted, pointing to the gold mangalsutra about Sita’s neck.

  ‘No need for wearing jewellery ever again.’

  She pushed her face close to Sita’s, her eyes unhinged and wild. The loose skin of her arms, as finely creased as ancient silk or tissue paper, brushed Sita’s lips as she fumbled with the catch of the necklace. Her breath, thickened by aniseed, beat upon Sita’s face. In the shadows Sita glimpsed her father-in-law, slumped on a chair, silent with shock and grief.

  As the mangalsutra was lifted from her neck, Sita instinctively raised a hand. The smooth gold still carried the warmth of her body upon it, and as she watched, the chain was returned to a blue velvet box that was locked with a tiny key. She imagined the ornament buried within the velvet, the heat of her flesh lingering upon it, leeching slowly away.

  ‘Witch! devil!’ Sita’s mother-in-law cursed, and the women of the family chorused agreement.

  ‘Most sinful of sinful creatures.’

  Someone grasped her arms. The glass wedding bangles covering each thin wrist were smashed with a stone, the shards of coloured glass catching the light as they shattered about her, the ties of marriage broken as they fell.

  ‘Now this, take it off.’

  The women advanced upon her, pulling at the red wedding sari, ripping it from her body, stripping her down to her core. Another woman stepped forward to throw before her a widow’s white cotton sari, bought hastily from a nearby shop.

  ‘You’ll wear this now until the day you die. A good woman dies before her husband.’

  ‘Amma…mother…’ she appealed to her new mother-in-law.

  ‘Aie Bhagwan! What have we done that such a shaitaan should come to us?’ Her mother-in-law muttered savagely, her eyes dark with fury.

  Someone took hold of Sita again, and with a rough wet cloth began rubbing at the marks of marriage, at the red bindi that anointed her forehead and the sindhoor along the parting of her hair. Her palms were scrubbed repeatedly, but the intricate designs of bridal henna were already an indelible part of her and could not be easily wiped away.

  ‘Now, this.’ Her mother-in-law rushed at her again to lift the thick plait of hair off Sita’s neck, thumping it down against her back.

  Sita cried out in panic, realising what awaited her. Once more the women of the family surged about her. Pushed and prodded, half-falling, half-walking, she was propelled across rooms and down flights of stairs. The smell of sweat and attar of roses lifted off the angry women, and from their wedding finery the faint perfume of mothballs was released. Sita was dragged out of the house and into the blaze of the sun.

  ‘You are nothing now, nothing,’ the women screamed as they pulled her along.

  In the small courtyard the barber, already alerted to his task, rose from where he crouched waiting in the shade of a tree, and came towards them. A stool was found, a towel was draped about her shoulders, water was brought in an enamel jug and the barber opened his bundle of implements.

  ‘Careful,’ Sita’s mother-in-law warned as the man’s blade and scissors flashed in the sun. The hair must be cut in one thick hank and as near Sita’s skull as possible, for it would be given as
alms to the local temple.

  Soon it was done and the long plait of hair lay before Sita in a dented metal bowl, like a dismembered limb. The wedding guests stood in a silent circle about her, as the barber next set about shaving her skull. Sita’s father-in-law observed her sourly from a distance, his lips tight, saying nothing before his wife’s forceful ordering of events. On the high wall of the courtyard monkeys sat picking lice from each other’s fur, oblivious of the furore below. A mangy pye-dog entered the courtyard through an open door, and settled to scratch itself near a water pump. The smell of cooking suddenly pervaded the yard as caterers heated great tureens of food to feed the guests who still swarmed about, preparing now not for a wedding but for a funeral.

  At last, Sita put up a hand and felt the naked dome of her skull, sore and bleeding from the razor’s rasp. Pulling the end of the cotton sari protectively over her head, she was aware of the rub of the cloth against her newly shorn skin. Immediately, her mother-in-law pulled the sari off Sita’s head again, so that everyone could see her shame. Sita bowed her head, knowing she must endure this moment if she was to survive the day and all that lay beyond it.

  Before nightfall, the bridegroom was cremated. Two heavy-jawed men, who Sita was informed were her stepsons, led male relatives from the house to the burning ghats by the river. There they would throw the first oil upon the pyre, igniting flames that would light up the darkening sky. The women waited at home, as custom demanded. From the nearby ghats the smell of incense, burning wood and roasting flesh drifted to them in the courtyard of the house. The women of the family tended Sita’s grieving mother-in-law who, sobbing and beating her breast, continued to shout shrill curses at Sita.

  ‘Die with him in those flames! In your next life may you bear only daughters, and never a son.’

  Sita stood by herself. An evening breeze lifting off the river stirred the spindly tree in the courtyard; bats flew in and out of its branches. A brass water vessel stood on a wall beside her, a nearby lantern lighting its metal surface. Upon it Sita saw the mirroring of her own face. It must be her, she realised, for no one else stood there. Without the frame of hair, her eyes appeared enormous dark craters within a thin face. Her lips stretched grotesquely across her jaw, her nose appeared flattened, and the slight frame of her body in the white sari trailed away down the curve of the vessel, insubstantial as a ghost. The tonsured skull of the creature reflected to her was still stained by the red marks of marriage, the bindi and the sindhoor, as if her body clung to those marks, as it now clung to life. Eventually, the marks would fade, just as the painted swirls of henna on her hands would vanish, leaving her invisible to the world.

  She wondered what would happen to her now; she was thirteen years old and a widow. Within the course of one day a husband had not only entered, but had also exited her life. His departure had left her an outcast, bound to a state of perpetual mourning, and she still did not know his name.

  In the main house, the bridal bower, heavy with the perfume of flowers, the bed decorated with strings of jasmine, the coverlet scattered with rose petals, lay undisturbed behind a locked door. Sita slept that night on a rush mat in an outhouse near the servant’s quarters, removed from her husband’s family, her presence as a widow now polluting to all. In the morning, she was told, she would be taken to that place where from now on she would live, invisible to the world.

  ‘You are nothing now; nothing,’ her mother-in-law screamed as they led her away into the night.

  ‘Without a husband, a father or a brother you are no one, nothing but a living dead thing.’ The words echoed after her.

  Beyond the outhouse, servants gossiped around a fire of burning cow dung, discussing the bridegroom’s death, discussing marriage in general, and the events of the day. The dense sweet smoke perfumed the cool night air. Sita listened to their talk, her shaven head still sore from the abrasive rasp of the razor, neutered by the loss of her thick dark hair. A bright moon speared the dusty glass of a small window high in the wall. In the dim light Sita held up her hands, gazing at the filigreed pattern of wedding henna on the palms of her hands and feet. The henna had darkened, and she remembered her aunt saying that if the mehendi took well it was a sign that your mother–in-law would love you.

  She shivered as she lay in the filthy shed, listening to the scuttle of rats and insects. Beyond the shame of it all, she recognised also with a pang of relief that she would not now have to endure her husband’s touch. When he had lifted the sari from her face and she had glanced up at him for the first time and seen his loose lips, all she could think of was that moment when they would be alone, and he would move towards her. In that instant she had prayed to the devi for help, and had been heard. She had been protected.

  4

  SINGAPORE, 2000

  At the university, the lift was being serviced in AS5, the Arts and Social Sciences building, so Amita was forced to climb the stairs to the fifth floor and her room in the Department of English Language and Literature. The ascent, with the heavy appendage of the laptop and books, left her wet with perspiration, but on pushing open the glass doors to the department, the cool relief of air-conditioning surrounded her. In her room, she dropped her bags onto a chair and pulled out her laptop.

  Parvati’s room was a short distance down the corridor and, after setting up the laptop and looking at some emails, Amita made her way there, not bothering to knock before she pushed open the door. Parvati was at her desk, talking to a student who sat across from her. They gave her a startled glance. Amita shut the door again after a word of apology, and made her way back to her room.

  Turning up the air-conditioning, she wiped the sweat off the back of her neck and opened the top button on her blouse. Nowadays, she always seemed to feel too hot or too cold. Nothing was helped by the weight she had recently gained and now tried to cover with looser clothes. Her weight was a lifelong problem she battled; neither fat nor slim, she just carried more flesh than was needed, and accepted by now that no diet would move it. When at home, Amita dressed carelessly in old jeans and baggy cotton shirts that gave her a masculine look. For the university, she wore stretch tops or soft blouses teamed with comfortable skirts of a longish length, or tailored trousers. On more frivolous occasions, she might choose an embroidered smock, but whatever she wore emphasised her preference for comfort and practicality.

  Feeling cooler, she settled herself at her desk, which was positioned at right angles to the window across the narrow end of the room. The university sprawled across a ridge of low hills and her office in the department, no different from any other along the corridor, faced the tree-filled slopes between campus buildings. Before focussing on work Amita always took a moment to gather into herself the green view from her window, of wide canopied rain-trees, and the fulsome angsana and tembusu. At any hour, she had only to turn her head to this natural world, the sun aflame on the banks of foliage, to regain her sense of self.

  There was plenty of work to be getting on with while she waited for Parvati to be free. She had a paper to write for an international conference in Delhi that she would be attending in a few months, and an essay to start for an American academic journal on the historic subject of sati. More pressing, she must also finish laying out the structure of the module, Feminism: Text and Theory, that she would be teaching in the coming semester and that must be uploaded online in the next few days. This was a basic introductory module for new students who, as expected in such a class in an Asian country, were exclusively female. Why were there no men, Amita always asked. She took care her classes always had a module on men and masculinities, yet no men ever came to hear it. It was the first question she asked her students as they assembled for their initial class. Where are our men? When she was a student in America, at Columbia University, there were always a few men in such classes, and some lectures on feminist topics were even given by men. Although things had advanced so much since she was a student there in the early 1980s, in conservative Singapore there w
ere still subjects that simply could not be approached. In Western universities, where gender studies had moved into areas of unbounded complexity, much of what she taught in Singapore might be thought no more than fundamental. However, this was Asia, and more particularly, this was Singapore; she went as far as she dared.

  Yet, at the beginning of each fresh academic year, she was heartened to see the minds of new students opening to absorb the thoughts she threw at them. In Singapore, her students were all young Asian women, Chinese, Indian or Malay, who, although modern in all outward appearances, were still subconsciously shaped by traditional cultures that valued women less than men. Recently, she had caught one of her young Indian undergrads in the canteen peeling an orange for a male companion and dutifully handing him segments one by one, holding each piece patiently in her fingers until he was ready to take it. Her friend was arguing with the boy next to him, and reached out for replenishment without even turning his head. The sight had incensed Amita, and she had walked determinedly up to the table and curtly instructed the boy to peel his own orange. He observed her in startled silence, while the girl met her eyes resentfully, without a glimmer of appreciation. Amita turned on her heel, uncaring of the apprehension or dislike with which many students regarded her.

  Unusually, this morning Amita felt out of sync with herself. All she could think of was her mother, and each thought further soured her mood. The things her mother had revealed to Parvati about the use of infanticide by the women of her village, including Amita’s own grandmother, had shocked her deeply. It was also an unsavoury coincidence that Amita had chosen the topic of female infanticide for the paper she was to present at the Delhi conference that had the theme, Gendered Violence: Transnational Perspectives.