INTERNATIONAL ACCLAIM FOR
Cinnamon Gardens
“Shyam Selvadurai’s new novel hails the small acts of courage that force a whole society to change.”
– Quill & Quire
“A mature and sophisticated successor to his accomplished first novel, Funny Boy.“
– National Post
“A completely captivating novel in which the reader feels fully absorbed in the lives of the characters.… Cinnamon Gardens is a book that will stay in your mind long after you shut the cover.”
– First City (India)
“Selvadurai has captured horrifyingly well the airlessness of a society in which only a few are truly able to breathe, and deeply.”
– The Times (U.K.)
“A true storyteller with a sure hand with character and plot.…”
– Montreal Gazette
“The lives of his characters [are] intertwined and interrelated, rich with the heat and scent of British colony overlay on an ancient society.… Wry references to love … grace notes of description for a lock of hair or the fold of a sari … add to the ambience generated by this beguiling novel.”
– Booklist
“There’s wit and irony in this elegantly written tale set in the palm-fringed, languorous world of upper crust Ceylon of the 1920s.…”
– India Today
“[Cinnamon Gardens] is an old-fashioned page-turner with a literary heart.…”
– The Advocate
BOOKS BY SHYAM SELVADURAI
FICTION
Funny Boy (1994)
Cinnamon Gardens (1998)
ANTHOLOGIES
Story-Wallah! A Celebration of South Asian Fiction (2004)
Copyright © 1998 by Shyam Selvadurai
Cloth edition published 1998
Trade paperback edition first published 1999
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Selvadurai, Shyam, 1965-
Cinnamon gardens
eISBN: 978-1-55199-718-6
I. Title.
PS8587.E445C56 2001 C813′.54 C2001-930011-5
PR9199.3.S44C56 2001
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters in this book and persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
The author would like to thank the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council for their financial support during the writing of this book.
The quotes from the Tirukkural are taken from The Kural by Tiruvalluvar. Translated from the Tamil by P.S. Sundaram and published by Penguin India. Reprinted by permission.
SERIES EDITOR: ELLEN SELIGMAN
The photograph of a street in Cinnamon Gardens is taken from H.W. Cave’s
The Book of Ceylon; individual photos are from a private collection.
Series logo design: Brian Bean
EMBLEM EDITIONS
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
The Canadian Publishers
75 Sherbourne Street,
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
www.mcclelland.com
v3.1
To my aunt, Bunny (Charlobelle) De Silva,
for all the books bought, all the stories read.
To Andrew, with all my love.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Book Two
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Acknowledgements
About the Author
“… for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
– George Eliot, Middlemarch
Book One
1
However great the hardship,
Pursue with firmness the happy end.
– The Tirukkural, verse 669
Annalukshmi Kandiah often felt that the verse from that great work of Tamil philosophy, the Tirukkural – “I see the sea of love, but not the raft on which to cross it” – could be applied to her own life, if “desire” was substituted for “love.” For she saw clearly the sea of her desires, but the raft fate had given her was so burdened with the mores of the world that she felt it would sink even in the shallowest of waters.
Like most visionaries, Annalukshmi somewhat exaggerated her constraints. For a young woman of twenty-two from a good Tamil family, living in the year 1927, her achievements were remarkable – or, depending on your conviction, appalling. She had completed her Senior Cambridge, an accomplishment fairly rare in that time for a girl; she had stood first islandwide in English literature, much to the discomfiture of every boys’ school. Then she had gone on to teachers college and qualified as a teacher.
Annalukshmi’s qualification as a teacher was held to be her greatest crime by her mother’s relatives, the Barnetts. A career as a teacher was reserved for those girls who were too poor or too ugly to ever catch a husband. They saw it as a deliberate thumbing of her nose at the prospect of marriage. She might as well have joined a convent. They blamed her wilful, careless nature on both parents. Her father, Murugasu, had gained notoriety in his village in Jaffna for beheading the Gods in the household shrine during a quarrel with his father, running away to Malaya, and converting to Christianity. Louisa, her mother, had defied family dictates and married Murugasu. The Barnetts were one of the oldest Christian Tamil families of Ceylon. Murugasu was too recent a convert to have, like them, generations of the civilizing influence of Christianity behind him.
Louisa placed the blame for her eldest daughter’s nature squarely on her husband’s shoulders. In the absence of a son – there were three daughters in the family – he had raised Annalukshmi as if she were a boy. He was responsible for her reckless nature, a disposition that would have been admissible, even charming, in a boy, but in a girl was surely a catastrophe. Louisa had tried to warn him of his mistake. She had tried to curtail Annalukshmi’s freedom, to inspire in her an understanding of the necessary restrictions that must be placed on a girl to protect her reputation and that of her family. Yet her attempts were useless, with her husband taking Annalukshmi off to the family rubb
er estate on inspections, teaching her tennis and swimming.
Louisa would have liked to feel satisfied that the entire blame rested on her husband, but she had to admit that the estrangement between Murugasu and her, which had finally forced her to return to Ceylon from Malaya, had sundered the close bond between father and daughter as well. It had left Annalukshmi with a deep hurt. Louisa had, indeed, agreed to let Annalukshmi go to teachers college in the hope that the responsibility of teaching would finally settle her down.
If Annalukshmi had been asked the reason for her nature – which she considered not wilful but that of the “new woman” who was not ashamed or afraid to ask for her share of the world – she would have pointed to two people: Miss Amelia Lawton, the missionary headmistress at the school she had attended and where she now taught, and her adopted daughter, Nancy (whose parents, impoverished villagers, had died of cholera when Nancy was thirteen years old). Annalukshmi felt that it was Miss Lawton and Nancy who had provided the cheer and pleasure in her life after her parents’ marriage failed and she and her sisters had returned to Colombo with their mother. Their bungalow had become her second home, and she spent most of her spare time with them, going for sea baths and occasionally taking holidays in the hill country. It was through Miss Lawton that she learnt about the struggles for women’s rights in England and Miss Lawton’s own small part in them during her college days. It was Miss Lawton who had encouraged her reading habit, which, she knew, had led to her standing first in English literature. It was the headmistress who had truly supported her in the decision to be a teacher.
When Miss Blake, the assistant headmistress, presented Annalukshmi with a gift of her bicycle on the day Miss Blake returned to England, Annalukshmi was spurred on to accept because of the smiling faces of Miss Lawton and Nancy, standing on the verandah steps above Miss Blake, nodding their approval.
That afternoon, Louisa was kneeling at one end of the back verandah. The heavy wooden box in which she stored her dry rations and spices was open before her as she measured out the ulundu to be soaked overnight for the morning’s thosais. She was disturbed from her task by the exclamations of her two younger daughters, Kumudini and Manohari. She dropped the lid shut and, not even waiting to padlock the box, picked up her bunch of keys and hurried through the drawing room. She came out onto the front verandah to find Annalukshmi standing by the bottom step with a bicycle.
Louisa drew in her breath in astonishment. “What on earth is this?”
“A bicycle,” Annalukshmi said, trying to sound as if it were the most normal thing in the world for her to turn up with one.
“I can see it is a bicycle. But what is it doing here?”
“It’s Miss Blake’s. She gave it to me as a going-away present.”
Annalukshmi pushed aside some hairs that had strayed from her plait, which she wore in a knot at the nape of her neck. In her mind, she went over the arguments she had rehearsed with Nancy to combat her family’s resistance.
Louisa clicked her tongue against her teeth in annoyance. “Don’t talk rubbish, Annalukshmi. You know you can’t go around on a bicycle.”
“And why not?”
Louisa’s face flushed at Annalukshmi’s impertinent tone.
Before she could proceed further, her middle daughter, Kumudini, laid a warning hand on Louisa’s arm. Arguments between her mother and older sister were often overheated, and Kumudini frequently had to step in as peacemaker. “Akka, be reasonable,” she said to Annalukshmi. “You can’t. People will say all sorts of things.”
Though Kumudini was twenty-one, and a year younger than Annalukshmi, she was regarded by everyone as the eldest because she was such a model of propriety.
“And look at the state of your sari,” Kumudini continued. “It’s ruined.” She shook her head. Though only a five-rupee Japanese Georgette sari, it was lovely, with a clover-leaf design on an off-white background. Now there was a grease stain along the bottom of it. Kumudini had, with great care, stitched this sari onto a length of belting because, at that time, a sari was sewn onto belting that hooked around the waist very much like a skirt, the only dressing required being the pleats and the fall draped once about the body and over the shoulder. Her efforts had been in vain. The sari was probably ruined. Further, the white sari blouse had two very unladylike sweat stains under the arms.
“We should put a chain around her neck and take her from door to door,” Manohari, the youngest, put in sarcastically. “She looks just like a monkey on a bicycle, and I’m sure people will pay us a lot of money to see her do tricks.”
Manohari, who was sixteen, actually thought the whole thing a bit of a lark. The situation merely presented her with an opportunity to exercise the wit she was famous for and lord it over her eldest sister.
“Excuse me for pointing out the obvious,” Louisa said, “but decent, respectable girls don’t ride bicycles.”
“They do,” Annalukshmi replied. “Lots of Burgher ladies and European ladies ride bicycles. Look at Miss Lawton.”
“Miss Lawton!” Manohari cried. “Miss Lawton says no rickshaws, Miss Lawton says ride a bicycle. If Miss Lawton told you to go and jump in the well, would you do that next?”
“So Miss Lawton is encouraging you in this nonsense.” Louisa fiddled with the keys on her triangular silver key ring so that her daughters would not see the hurt she felt when Annalukshmi valued the opinions and advice of another woman above her own mother’s.
“Be sensible, Akka,” Kumudini said. “It’s one thing for European ladies to ride bicycles. We can’t.”
“And we never will, unless someone makes a start,” Annalukshmi replied. “How will the women of this country ever progress? European women can ride bicycles and do all sorts of other things because a few brave women made a start.”
“I don’t care what Miss Lawton says,” Louisa said as she hooked her key ring onto the waistline of her sari. “You cannot ride that bicycle, Annalukshmi. It’s simply out of the question.”
Annalukshmi started to protest, but her mother waved her hand to say that she would not entertain any further pleas. She went back into the house to continue her duties.
“I shall ride it anyway,” Annalukshmi called out after her mother.
Louisa chose to ignore the taunt.
Annalukshmi now glared at Kumudini and Manohari. “Thank you very much for your sisterly support,” she said.
She stalked off, wheeling the bicycle in front of her.
After Annalukshmi had leant the bicycle against the side of the house, she stood brooding over her possession. She thought of the sheer pleasure she got from riding the bicycle, of the exhilaration that rose in her as she felt the bicycle gather speed under her, the panting sense of accomplishment as she reached the top of a slope and the rush of wind in her hair and under her sari as she went down the other side. Then there was the freedom to come and go as she pleased. Already she and Nancy had made numerous expeditions on Miss Lawton’s and Miss Blake’s bicycles whenever Annalukshmi had stayed over at the headmistress’s bungalow. She recalled one in particular now: a Saturday morning she and Nancy had got up while it was still dark and ridden to the Galle Face Promenade to watch the sun rise over the sea. They had sat on a bench by the sea wall in contented silence, wrapped in their shawls, the air misty around them, the taste of salt on their lips. It had been a spectacular sight, the first slivers of light on the rolling waves like silver-coloured sea creatures that surfaced and dipped, surfaced and dipped. Then the splinters of light had turned gold and, as more and more of them appeared, the sea seemed alive with golden fish.
Annalukshmi was not going to let herself be stopped by the ridiculous conventions of society. She convinced herself that it was only fear of societal censure that made her mother forbid her and no personal repugnance on Louisa’s part. After all, when they were girls in Malaya, her mother had not protested when her father had taught her to ride her cousin’s bicycle. Annalukshmi glanced contemplatively at the bicycle.
It really was a very jolly bicycle, the frame a shiny red. There were red, white, and blue streamers at the ends of the handlebar, with corresponding colours on the seat. The wicker basket attached to the handlebar proudly displayed a Union Jack. A plan began to form in her mind. Tapping her chin thoughtfully, she went inside to wash before tiffin.
Colombo, with its fine port, its midway position between East and West, was one of the great junctions of the shipping world in the 1920s. It was thus of immense importance to the commerce of the British Empire. Yet, the city had none of the chaos of masonry, the hustle and bustle that one associated with the other great cities of the East, be they Singapore or Shanghai or Bombay. Instead, the principal impression of Colombo was that of trees and water. The city was flanked on one side by the ocean, and its inhabitants were never very far from the salty smell of the sea air and its cooling breezes. In the middle of the city was the extensive Beira Lake, from which tributaries snaked their way through the city, forming smaller lakes at various junctures. The waters of the lakes were bordered by foliage of unrivalled beauty, palms of every variety, masses of scarlet flamboyant blossoms, the waving leaves of plantain trees. The streets of Colombo were tarred and kept in good condition. They were wide and lined on both sides by huge trees that cast their shade over the roads. The most common of these was the suriya tree, whose profuse blossoms often formed a carpet of primrose yellow on the pavements. Even the Fort, the commercial district of Colombo, had broad streets with grand, whitewashed buildings. The merchant offices and stores were capacious and often had colonnaded verandahs running the length of them to provide shade for pedestrians.
The only part of Colombo that possessed the chaos and scramble of other large cities was the Pettah, where the colourful bazaars were always raucous with the cries of vendors, the fierce bargaining of women shopping. Here the streets were narrow, the buildings huddled together, the shops and domestic dwellings often open to the streets, the activity of selling and living going on on the streets themselves. The air was pungent with the odour of fruits, spices, dried fish, meat, the blood from butcher shops running into the open drains. The roads were crowded with people, cows, goats, pigs, and the constant flutter of scavenging crows.
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