by Pratap Reddy
“So what?” Thilakam said, stuffing her unlovely foot into the slipper. She traipsed up and down the limited space in the shop. She even raised the hem of her sari to examine her feet with close attention.
When she had tried all the footwear in the bridal collection, she said insistently: “Andar se dikhao! Andar se dikhao!”
“Do you really want to see what I have inside?” the salesman asked with an edge to his voice. Without further ado, he unzippered his fly and thrust out his pelvis.
Thilakam gave a shriek shot up like pheasant from a bush. Saying, “How dare you! How dare you!” she ran out of the shop. Atom Auntie followed her, not quite knowing whether to be amused or outraged.
“That wicked man!” Thilakam said, when Atom Auntie joined her on the street. “How could he do that? I should have him arrested for lewd behaviour! Cheap fellow — cheap like the quality of his footwear!”
“But you must accept,” Atom Auntie said, “that he had variety.”
When she finished the story, Atom Auntie laughed so much that tears streamed once again out of her eyes. As she couldn’t continue to stir the sheera, she reduced the heat to simmer on her gas stove, to give her time to recover from the merry recollection.
“Did he show his puppy shame?” Ramya asked breathlessly.
“Not quite,” Atom Auntie said laughing. “He had his underwear on. Green and blue striped.”
When Ramya turned nine, Atom Auntie moved out of their house. She rented a small apartment near the school where she taught. The commute was getting to be more and more exhausting. The city was growing, the population exploding by leaps and bounds because of the migration of people from the rural areas seeking jobs and facilities. All this exerted pressure on an already overburdened infrastructure.
There was also the matter of mild tension between Mummy and Atom Auntie for no apparent reason. While each was polite to the other, there was a coolness between them. Ramya, uncannily perceptive as children are, felt she was the cause of the friction between her mother and aunt. Mummy must have resented Atom Auntie monopolizing Ramya’s affections, but what else could one expect? If Mummy had taken care of Ramya properly by herself, she would surely have been the object of her daughter’s adoration, with no other contenders.
The world of grownups was too complicated for little Ramya.
Whenever Daddy went to Atom Auntie’s house to look her up, he never failed to take Ramya with him. For Ramya these trips were the most precious of her life. No pilgrimage or sightseeing tour could ever hold a candle to a visit to Atom Auntie’s home.
Her new home was on the outskirts of the city. It took nearly an hour to get there. The neighbourhood had a rustic look, which isn’t to say that there were glens, brooks and haystacks about. It was rustic in the sense that the streets were made of dirt and were potholed, and not lined with sidewalks. Dogs, cows, goats, pigs and hens moved about freely, dotting the street with their excreta. The unpaved road became so narrow that Daddy couldn’t drive the car right up to the building in which Atom Auntie lived. He parked it a few hundred yards away at a convenient spot, and the two of them walked the rest of the way.
She lived in a small portion of the second floor of the building. The view from her tiny living room was pretty: They could see a small temple surrounded by trees. It was a shrine dedicated to Hanuman, the monkey god. They could see devotees going to or coming out from the temple. Now and then they could hear the temple bells ring.
Atom Auntie as usual had made sweets and salty snacks for Ramya. The entire house carried the aroma of the food. While Ramya had kheer or some such sweet, Daddy would drink foaming south Indian coffee from a small stainless-steel tumbler. Once he finished his coffee he’d go back to his clinic, leaving Ramya behind. He’d return late in the evening to take her home.
There was nothing Ramya liked more than being in Atom Auntie’s house. It was no patch on their palatial home, manned by many servants, in the heart of the city, yet Ramya felt far happier here than anywhere else in the world. Atom Auntie kept her small house spotlessly clean. Every nook and corner had the sweet smell of the incense sticks Atom Auntie burned for the morning prayer. There were many dolls and toys for Ramya to play with, but more importantly Atom Auntie always joined in as if she were a playmate of Ramya’s.
But the thing Ramya enjoyed most was having her palm read. Atom Auntie had become a palmist of sorts. There was a book by Cheiro or some such person in the small niche in the wall which Atom Auntie used as a bookshelf. Some of the other books occupying the niche were Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Bullfinch’s Greek Mythology, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, and the Buddhist Dhammapada.
While Ramya never questioned why Atom Auntie, of all people, would take to palmistry, as she grew older she often wondered about it. Did Atom Auntie presume she could change her destiny by knowing what the future held in store for her? Or did she simply want to be forewarned about other dreadful things which were to come her way? On the other hand, Atom Auntie, well-read as she was, would often quote the lines from Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: “Moving finger writes, and, having writ moves on/ Nor all thy Piety nor Wit/ Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line/ Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
Once Ramya had finished eating her snack, a murukku or some chudva, she’d ask, wiping her hand on her skirt: “Can you read my hand, Atom Auntie?”
“First, go and wash your hands like a good girl. You shouldn’t wipe your hands on your skirt,” Atom Auntie said with a sigh. What could one expect of a child who was in care of a capricious team of servants?
After washing her hands in the tiny washbasin placed outside the bathroom, Ramya went up to Atom Auntie and extended her palm, which now reeked of Rexona soap.
“No, give me your left hand. A woman’s future is written on her left hand.”
“Isn’t that the dirty hand?” Ramya said.
“Whoever said so?” Atom Auntie said, knowing full well who might have said that. Who else but Amma? “Ramya!” Amma would say. “Don’t eat the biscuit with your dirty hand. Use your right hand.”
“Now let me see …” Atom Auntie said, shaking her head, as she took Ramya’s unmanicured hand with prominent mourning borders outlining the nails.
“How beautiful your hands look compared to mine!” Ramya said, sitting on a stool opposite Atom Auntie’s mini living room. Atom Auntie sat on a divan converted from a large iron trunk.
It was undeniable that Atom Auntie had beautiful, fair hands, the colour of pale sandalwood. And she kept them well manicured, painting her long tapering nails a pearly pink. The gold bangles she wore always seemed to shine with an extra lustre on her wrists.
“Whose beautiful hands are you talking about?” Atom Auntie asked, momentarily sidetracked. Thrusting her palm under Ramya’s nose, she said: “Look at my palm. See how many lines there are! Criss-crossing like railway lines in Vijayawada junction. They say a person who has so many lines would lead a very unhappy life.”
There was moment of silence. Ramya looked at her own palm; there didn’t seem to be too many lines. What a relief!
Atom Auntie went to her study table and pulled a drawer out. After rummaging in it, she came back with a magnifying glass and a telescopic pointer. Atom Auntie never did anything by halves. Studying the lines on Ramya’s hand through the glass, as though for the first time, she said: “This is your life-line.” Simultaneously, she traced the line, using the pointer for Ramya’s benefit. “Do you see how long the line is? That means you have a very long life ahead of you. And this is your line of education … You will be a very well-qualified young woman. And this is your love line — you will marry a very rich and handsome man.”
“How many children will I have?”
“Let me see …” Atom Auntie peered at some hachures on the side of Ramya’s palm, counting them aloud, “One-two-three.”
“Three children! How nice! I can play with them every day! Can I take them to school with me?�
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“They will be happy to go to school with you. And you can play with them all day,” Atom Auntie said laughing.
Ramya never forgot the day Atom Auntie gave her the lemon-flavoured lollipop. She was in Grade 9, too old to crave a lollipop. It was given to Atom Auntie by a student celebrating her birthday. As with all the gifts that came her way, she saved it for Ramya. How thrilled Atom Auntie was to see her. She hugged Ramya and showered her with kisses. Atom Auntie looked thin and tired and there were streaks of grey in her hair. To see her beloved aunt in that condition brought a lump to Ramya’s throat.
Daddy took Atom Auntie’s wrist, and checked her pulse while staring at his HMT watch. Then he disinterred the BP apparatus from his bag, and opened the long rectangular machine. He wore his steth, and pumped air into the BP machine, and the column of mercury began to rise briskly. Then he released the air, letting the mercury in the machine drop in slow degrees.
“Everything’s normal,” Daddy declared, removing the steth from his ears. He returned the doctor’s paraphernalia to his bag, and then handed over a whole hoard of physician’s samples he had brought along with him.
While Atom Auntie made coffee for Daddy, Ramya ate the Mysore pak and Bombay mixture served in small stainless-steel plates. Atom Auntie had made them specially for Ramya, sparing neither effort nor expense, and Ramya could taste her aunt’s affection in the snacks. No snacks in the world tasted as delicious as the ones Atom Auntie made for her.
It began to grow dark as the winter evening drew to a close. The sky was filling with darker shades, purple and Prussian blue. Atom Auntie switched on a small forty-watt bulb. The wiring in the house was so old and weak that she had to be careful of how much power she used. There was no way you could use an electric water heater in the house; so Atom Auntie took her bath with cold water every day, even in winter.
When they were about to leave, Atom Auntie came down the stairs to see them off. As Ramya and her father walked away, she stood at the gate waving to them. Every now and then Ramya stopped, her heart growing heavier by the minute, to turn around and look at her aunt. As the distance grew between them, Atom Auntie seemed to shrink in size. Just before turning the corner, Ramya looked back for the last time. In the dim light of the street lamp, she saw Atom Auntie, unsubstantial as a shadow, still standing by the gate with her hand raised in farewell.
Ramya never saw Atom Auntie alive again.
6
Amma
RAMYA FINDS AMMA’S japmala, her rosary, in her box. Ramya had been so close to her grandmother, her Ammamma, that she used to call her Amma, which means mother. The rosary has 108 beads — at least there ought to be; she has never bothered to count them. 108 is an auspicious number in the Hindu tradition. The beads are pale brown, made from the wood of holy basil, known locally as tulasi, a sacred, strong-smelling medicinal shrub. Ramya remembers seeing her grandmother sitting in silence, her lips working overtime, repeatedly invoking any one of the 330 million Hindu gods, while her fingers rolled over the beads as if she were winding a watch.
In the box, Ramya also discovers a pair of peculiar objects which bring a smile to her lips. They are made of silver but have blackened with age — time is such a merciless phenomenon. One of the utensils is shaped like a small thin spoon, and the other a tiny spear. They have eyeholes at their ends, and are held together by a silver wire, like a key ring. Amma never used them but kept them as souvenirs.
“What are these funny things, Amma?” Ramya remembers asking her grandmother.
“My brother gave them to me, long, long ago,” Amma had said, taking the silver tools from Ramya. “This one is for cleaning the wax from the ears and this for picking your teeth.”
“Really?” Ramya had said, quickly taking back the objects. “Can I use them?”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ll end up getting ear or gum infection if use these things. Besides, they are just keepsakes.”
Digging further into her box, Ramya is surprised not to find the old, well-thumbed copy of the Bhagavad Gita. What could have happened to it? She can’t even recollect when she last saw it. All she can say with certainty is that it was very much there, in the first few months of owning the chest, when she opened and closed the lid a million times, her eyes lovingly dwelling on her newly-acquired possessions.
She seems to have mislaid the holy book, just like she has done with her faith. Irretrievably. Without realizing it, she’d let her belief fall off the radar — a casualty of the hurly-burly of modern life. It is years since she visited a temple, or genuflected before the silver figurines she has in the house. These idols, which originally belonged to her mother, are now stowed somewhere in her basement, out of sight. And out of mind.
She’d like to read a holy book now, just to see if it would provide comfort in these difficult times. Who knows, at this stage in her life, it could be just what the doctor ordered. She can’t even recall in what language her grandmother’s copy of the Gita was. The volume with its browned pages was already old then, and had been rebound by a local bookbinder, using a blue, marblepatterned cardboard for its covers, and wine-red cloth for its spine. Was the commentary on the primordial verse in Telugu? If so, she could have coped, though perhaps with some difficulty. If it was in Hindi, then too it was manageable, though the going would’ve been tougher. What if it had no commentary at all and was all in the original Sanskrit, that ancient if moribund tongue? She sincerely hoped it wasn’t. She would make very little headway, though Sanskrit was possibly the forerunner of all Indo-European languages.
Long before Amma came to stay with them for good, she visited them in their house in Hyderabad. In those early days she was merely Ammamma, Ramya’s mother’s mother. Having taken an overnight train, she materialized on their doorstep at the crack of dawn, with her big bulging holdall, and her shining brass goglet in which she carried drinking water for the journey. She would have taken a cycle-rickshaw, after much haggling, and come on her own from the railway station. It was an age when distances were short, and the world a much safer planet. Often, the price of the ride was not finalized until after rickshaw arrived at the destination. One heard Amma’s imperious voice and the importunate tone of the rickshaw puller outside the compound gate, in the final round of negotiation. If the rickshaw-puller got the better of Amma, he blessed her and all her descendants, and chirpily ride away, tinkling his bell. But if he was worsted, he cursed her to damnation for all the world to hear, and furiously pedalled away to the ratcheting noise of his rickshaw.
Unfazed, Amma entered the house with a proprietorial air and headed straight to the spare bedroom on the ground floor. Whether she was occupying it or not, the room always harboured the smell of the snuff tobacco she used, staking her territorial rights.
One of the first things Amma did after settling down was to unpack the loads of sweets and pickles she’d made over the preceding weeks. Boxes and jars would be piled high on the sideboard in the dining room.
“See what I’ve brought for you,” Amma said to the sleepy-eyed but excited Ramya. The two of them sat on the floor beside the unrolled holdall lying supine, with its many pouches open-mouthed as if yawning after a long sleepless journey. Amma never failed to bring something for her granddaughter — a gaudily painted doll or rustic-looking toy, the likes of which one could never find in a city.
“Thank you, Ammamma,” Ramya said primly in English, like a well-brought-up girl who attends a convent school.
Then Amma added unthinkingly, hurting Ramya to the core of her being: “How thin you’ve become!” To Ramya, her much commented-upon skinniness felt like a personal failing, a moral shortcoming. But the punishment Amma had in mind for her had a delicious ring to it: “Now that I’m here, I’ll make all your favourite dishes. You can eat to your heart’s content!” She added as an aside: “Hopefully, you will put on some weight!”
Amma’s khaki holdall was an object of endless fascination for Ramya. There was a light mattress and
a pillow inserted into a tough canvas-like outer cover, which had many pockets and compartments stitched into it. The holdall waned and waxed like the moon during the course of Amma’s stay. First, Amma emptied the things she’d brought from her town, making the holdall a skinny relic, and then, in the days before her return, the holdall started growing in size like a balloon, getting stuffed with the purchases Amma made to take back with her. On the day of her departure, the holdall stood like a gigantic jam roll. The leather straps which stretched tightly around it were secured with a lock. The goglet, scrubbed with tamarind juice once more in preparation for the return journey, sparkled like burnished gold.
When it was time to leave, Amma, surrounded by a ring of servants who gathered to see her off, wept a little, and soon all the maids joined in like an enthusiastic Greek chorus, adding an operatic touch.
In addition to giving tips to the servants — the money painstakingly extracted from cloth-bag tucked away at her waist, Amma often made a present of twenty rupees or so to Ramya. Once when she was very young, mistaking the currency notes for trash, she’d taken the smelly, tightly-folded wad and waddled up to the wickerwork wastepaper basket in the drawing room. Saying, “Ghaleez!” which meant dirt in Urdu, she’d tossed the money into the wastepaper basket, much to the merriment of the maids.
Once the vails were distributed, Amma would ask one of the servants to flag down a passing cycle-rickshaw. But if Daddy was at home, he offered to drop Amma at the station. Being a GP, he was usually at his private clinic in the heart of the city, or out on house calls. One knew whether he was in the house by the presence of his doctor’s bag, with his name emblazoned in gold, standing on the console table. The leather bag was a rectangular pyramid in shape. It contained medical bric-a-brac like glass syringes, needles, ampoules of distilled water, a spirit lamp, BP apparatus, and a stethoscope, the last of which Daddy fondly called his steth. It sounded like an endearment, like calling someone named Elizabeth, Beth.
