Tell A Thousand Lies

by Rasana Atreya

  “How could a child so… ordinary-looking possibly be mine?” my father is said to have exclaimed moments after my birth, a frown marring his extraordinarily handsome face.

  “Donkey’s egg,” Ammamma said with uncharacteristic rudeness towards a son-in-law of the family. “Whoever heard of a newborn being beautiful?”

  But this was exactly the excuse he was looking for. Our mother had died in childbirth minutes after delivering us twin girls. This, after she’d already burdened our father with an older daughter. Had any of us been born the right gender, with the consequent ability to take care of our father in his old age, this question of paternity would have never come up. With no son and no wife, he felt justified in discarding us and taking on a new life.

  Ammamma stepped in after the abandonment, not that she had much of a choice; my father had no family. Who else would take on the headache of raising, and marrying off, three girls? Other than a grandmother, that is.

  My twin and I remained nameless for almost a year after our birth, a period of intense agonizing for my grandmother. She finally settled on Pullamma – twig girl – for me, the older twin. To bestow a fancier name would be to risk the wrath of the Gods, the current misfortunes being more than she could bear. She debated on Pichamma – mad girl – for my twin; the Gods must have been smiling on my sister because they intervened in the form of Ammamma’s mother-in-law. The old lady decreed that it was only proper that such a fair and pretty child be named after her. So my twin ended up being named Lata.

  Fair-skinned Lata was as delicate as the creeper she was named for, while our older sister Malli, with her pinkish-white complexion, couldn’t be more flower-like if she tried.

  All through childhood, I was teased mercilessly for my name. I was more a branch than a twig; a stump really, and the other children never let me forget it. They called me Nalla Pulla – black twig – for the colour of my skin. I swore when I had children of my own, I would give them the most beautiful names possible.

  Many years later, when I did have my child, that choice would not be mine to make.

  ><

  My grandmother was an elegant lady. Not very tall, but of fair skin. In her youth, she’d been as slender as Lata, though over the years gravity had caused her body to settle mainly around her hips. So renowned were her dowry, and her beauty, that her hand in marriage was sought far and wide. After great consideration, Ammamma’s father settled on an alliance with my grandfather.

  “The only bad decision my father ever made in his life,” Ammamma said with a shake of the head. “Such a good man my father was, with complexion like fresh fruit, and on top of it – honourable like anything.”

  Everything my grandfather wasn’t. Post-wedding, he gave up his prestigious tahsildar job; none of that tax collection business for him. Instead, he efficiently worked his way through Ammamma’s not insubstantial dowry, along with most of his own inheritance before he passed on from drinking country liquor. Ammamma was forced to sell off much of her jewellery to marry off her four daughters, and would have been living on some Brahmin’s charity, but for the fact my grandfather hadn’t been able to sell his ancestral home from under her before he joined his ancestors in the heavens above. Then our mother died, and our father departed to find God in the Himalayas.

  Losing her daughter to childbirth, and her son-in-law to irresponsibility, Ammamma had tough decisions to make.

  A few years after she inherited us, the village elders stepped in to counsel. “Your oldest and youngest granddaughters are pleasing to the eye,” they told Ammamma. “It will be easy enough to find good matches for them, even considering your limited dowry giving ability.”

  “What about my Pullamma?” Ammamma asked, distressed.

  “You need to be practical, Seetamma,” the elders said. “She has neither the looks, nor the dowry. Keep her at home. After all, you will need someone to tend to you in your old age.”

  “But who will provide for her when I am gone? Who will help her in her old age, I ask you?”

  But the village elders had done their duty by the poor widow. They had dispensed the best possible advice. Having no answers to Ammamma’s questions, they joined the palms of their hands in farewell and took leave.

  Ammamma was angry, but Lakshmi garu believed their advice to be sound. “Pullamma is like a palm tree, bending over with her height. Hurts my neck to look up at her. That mole below her nose. And dark like anything. Be realistic. Where will you get a groom tall enough for her? And more importantly, how will you find enough dowry to take her off your hands?”

  After daily discourses by Lakshmi garu on the rightness of this course of action, this began to make perfect sense to all concerned – me included. There was no question that Lata and Malli stood better chances of making good matches than I. Lata had inherited our mother’s delicate build and flashing cat eyes, while Malli was blessed with a combination of Ammamma’s and our father’s best features.

  I got the leftovers.

  I resigned myself to my fate.

  ><

  Though the village elders and Lakshmi garu had given up on my marital prospects, Ammamma hadn’t. Not until the day of Malli’s bride viewing, anyway.

  Ammamma worried about what would happen to me after she passed away. What protection would I have in society without a husband? What respect? Without the sanctity of the wedding pustela taadu around my neck, I would be excluded from everything a married woman was entitled to – the festivals, the social functions, the right to hold my head high in society.

  I shuddered to think I might end up like Shantamma, that old hag who squatted by her front door all day, shaking clenched fists at the children who giggled at her as they passed by.

  The village elders had told Ammamma often enough that a girl was someone else’s property, her father’s home being a transitional place for her. Tradition decreed the role of a girl’s birth family was to nurture her, get her married, and send her off to her husband’s home. It would be many years before it occurred to me that if my birth home was not mine, and my married home was my in-laws’, which was the house I could expect to claim?

  ><

  “Malli, I don’t worry about,” Ammamma said to her friend, Lakshmi garu, as she oiled my hair under the warm winter sun. She sat behind me on a straw mat in the middle of our courtyard. “Lata is also pretty enough. It is only this one.” She thumped the back of my head with the flat of her palm, causing my head to hit my upraised knee.

  “Ammamma!” It made me weary, this endless marriage-prospects discussion in our women-only household.

  Ammamma massaged my head so vigorously, my teeth rattled.

  “Like the other problems in my cursed life weren’t enough, I made the blunder of sending this one and Lata to school all the way to 12th class. Just because that fool of a headmaster was after my blood.”

  “And look where it got you,” Lakshmi garu said.

  “Fanciful notions,” Ammamma said. “He isn’t the one with overeducated, unmarried girls on his hands.”

  I tried to keep my sigh inaudible.

  Lata looked up from her book.

  Malli continued weaving the jasmines into a garland.

  Lakshmi garu settled on another mat, straw tray in hand. She peered intently at the rice, picking out stones. “These ration shop fellows, such cheats they are, Seetamma. Must be adding at least a quarter kilo of stones to each bag of rice.”

  I leaned back against Ammamma’s knee and slowly closed my eyes, breathing in the odour of Parachute coconut hair oil. I must have lurched forward because it caused Ammamma to pull hard on my hair.

  “Ow,” I yelped.

  Ammamma was too steamed to notice my distress. “Lata passed her 12th class in distinction,” she said, stressing the word ‘distinction’ like it was deserving of particular disgust. “Can you believe it?”

  Lata made a face.

  I felt a tug of satisfaction. I might have passed 12th class, too, but at least I had the g
ood sense not to do well.

  Ammamma continued, “With such good marks, how am I to find her a suitable groom, I ask you?”

  “At least Malli was smart enough not to study too much,” Lakshmi garu said.

  A smile hovered on Malli’s perfectly shaped lips.

  Ammamma nodded with grim satisfaction. Malli had failed her 6th class, then refused to return to school. That suited Ammamma just fine.

  “Maybe I can hide Lata’s education,” Ammamma said. From the family of the prospective groom, she meant.

  “But you can’t hide Pullamma’s appearance.”

  Ammamma dropped her head in her hands. “True enough.”

  I considered Lakshmi garu’s boxy face and protruding eyes, trying to ignore the hurt. Would marriage make my lack of looks irrelevant, too?

  “A little dowry will get the other two good enough grooms,” Lakshmi garu said. “They are pretty enough. But this one…” She inspected my face, one feature at a time, face devoid of hope.

  In spite of myself, I laughed. Lakshmi garu could be such a drama queen.

  Ammamma set aside the bottle of hair oil and nudged me to a sitting position. She started to braid, each pull on the hair jerking my head backward.

  Lakshmi garu went back to her rice picking. “If you had a husband or a son, even a grandson to support you...”

  “Such is my fate, Lakshmi,” Ammamma said, slapping her forehead with the palm of her hand. “People are already asking me to give Lata in marriage. If I can’t get this one married off” – thump on my back for emphasis – “how long will I be able to keep a younger granddaughter at home?”

  My sister, Lata, was a whole minute younger than me.

  “Who will accept her then, hanh?” Ammamma continued in agitation. “Headmaster garu keeps reminding me gov’ment has set eighteen years as legal marriage age for girls. Already past puberty, my granddaughters are. Is gov’ment going to pay the larger dowries if I delay their marriages, I ask you?”

  The women shared a look of commiseration.

  Shaking my head, I turned my face to the sun.

  Ammamma whacked the side of my head. “The winter sun will make you darker.” She bent down and kissed my forehead in remorse, her pale cheeks pink from the warming rays of the sun.

  Lakshmi garu cocked her head and considered me for a moment, winter sun glinting off the powered smoothness of her mud brown face. Pursing her lips she said, “Nothing will make this one pretty. But at least use one of those fairness creams. I saw on TV if you use it regularly, the girl will become fair and marriage proposals will start pouring in like anything.”

  Ammamma snorted as she put a rubber band at the end of my braid. “Looting people is what they are doing. I tried and tried with that cream, but did it make her fair? On the Lord of the Seven Hills, I tell you, we’ve had to watch every paisa because of that cursed cream. Not to mention the money wasted on all those concoctions that quack in the village palmed off on me.” For having taken the Lord’s name in vain, Ammamma turned eastward and raised the joined palms of her hands in supplication. Not wanting to take chances, she also crossed her hands at her wrists and gave her cheeks gentle slaps. Then she held my face in her hands and sighed. “Oh Child! Why were you cursed with the colour of your wretched grandfather?”

  Our grandfather, the wretched one, had been as dark as the underside of my best friend’s sooty kerosene stove. For him, skin colour wasn’t an issue; he had been able to marry the fair-skinned Ammamma, hadn’t he?

  Ammamma continued, “Why couldn’t you have been fair like me, or pretty like your sisters? By now you would have been married off into a family with one tractor and two motorcycles, and lording over ten cows.”

  “And heavy with your first child, too,” Lakshmi garu added.

  Wearying of this dog-chase-tail discussion, I threaded my fingers through the looped string in my hands and pushed it up for my grandmother to see. “Look Ammamma! I made a bridge.”

  Ammamma bent down and kissed my cheek. “How I shudder to think of this foolish child’s future.”

  Chapter 3

  Path of a Friendship

  I might have shared parents with Malli and Lata, but Chinni was the sister of my heart.

  The twinkly eyed Chinni, short, plump and pretty, her skin the colour of rice husk – and I dark, and tall like a bent-over palm tree – were fondly referred to as milk and coffee, both for the fact that we were always together, as well for the contrasting colours of our skin.

  Chinni, Lata and I were in the same class, but it was my best friend I walked to school with, in our matching uniforms of blue pinafores, almost-white shirts and red-ribbons braided into our pigtails. Chinni and I sat cross-legged on the cemented floor of our classroom, sharing a slate, alternating the use of a slim piece of chalk and dreaming up ways to distract our Master.

  “I am convinced you have a usable brain tucked away somewhere, Pullamma,” our Master said on a daily basis, clutching at his head in despair, causing Chinni and me to burst into giggles. “Always dreaming up some mischief or the other. If only you would dust it out, and put it to good use.”

  But who cared? Of what use was education to girls? Would it help with cooking, or getting up to fill municipal water in the middle of the night, or dealing with mothers-in-law? We giggled and gossiped in the back row, while Lata settled up front and worked her way to the top of the class.

  Our classroom was poorly lit by an overhead bulb hanging off a long, frayed electrical cord. Garden lizards darted between the cracks in the mud walls, flicking tongues, swallowing insects and providing entertainment to the class. Occasionally, after the boys had chased some poor lizard all over class, the frightened creature would make its escape, leaving behind its tail. Chinni and I stood with the boys, examining the detached tail as it writhed on the ground, while the rest of the girls squealed. Privately we thought they were a pretty silly bunch.

  Chinni and I lived for such disruptions to our class. If our elders hadn’t made us go to school, mainly to get us out of the way of their daily chores, we might have spent our time in more such pleasurable pursuits.

  Another thing we looked forward to were the power cuts which inevitably followed rising temperatures. When the fan in our classroom shuddered to a halt, our headmaster ordered us out under the cool of the large raavi tree. Classes resumed, with our teacher writing on a small, portable blackboard. Many times, Chinni and I would slowly lean against the tree and wink at each other. The other children clapped their mouths at the sight of us winking, horrified at our boldness. When they started to giggle, our Master would turn around, the glare in his rheumy eyes prompting us to sit up straight. The children would laugh. Too babyish for words; but it was the best we could come up with, given what we had to play with.

  To pray for frequent power cuts, Chinni and I stopped at the Durga temple before heading off to school each morning, placing a flower at the altar to bribe the Goddess. The rest of the day was spent waiting for that escape to the raavi tree.

  This was more than Lata could bear. “Pullamma,” she said, “pray for something good. Brains, perhaps. No more mischief in class, I’m warning you. I want to do well in the exams.”

  Chinni made faces behind Lata’s back. “I’m going to be a lady doctor,” she mimicked my sister in a sing song voice. “I am going to be a lady Prime Minister.”

  Then she and I ran giggling, fleeing to escape Lata’s wrath.

  As we got to higher classes, our headmaster began to nurture high hopes for Lata. We didn’t have any doctor in the village, let alone a lady one, so he thought it would be wonderful if she were the first. Lata had no problem with that. All she talked about was how she would walk around the village, stethoscope around her neck, tending to the sick and the powerful, the rich and the needy. When we giggled at her pomposity, Lata tossed her long braid over her shoulder, and stalked off.

  ><

  School over for the day, I settled on the tyre swing in our courtyard,
watching Malli, Ammamma and Lakshmi garu prepare the tomato for pickling.

  Using a long wooden spoon, Malli turned over the sun dried tomato marinating in sesame seed oil. “Does this need more mustard powder? A little more asafoetida and turmeric, perhaps?”

  Lakshmi garu put some in her mouth and pursed her lips. “I think too much salt is the problem. Add some more chilli powder to balance it.”

  Ammamma made the addition and mixed it well. “Needs another day in the sun.”

  Lakshmi garu nodded.

  Dusk was approaching, so I helped Malli lug the fragile ceramic jars of pickle inside. We’d bring out the jars next morning, and open them to the sun again.

  The courtyard gate rattled. The knock, this late in the evening, was as unexpected as road repairs in a non-election year.

  Ammamma jerked her head up, startled.

  Lata hurried forward, an expectant look on her face.

  Lakshmi garu and Ammamma wiped their hands on their saris and got to their feet.

  Malli started to sweep the courtyard.

  It was the school Headmaster. When he’d been greeted and seated, Headmaster garu said, “Your Lata is extremely bright. I think she should study to be a doctor.”

  There was stunned silence.

  Lakshmi garu erupted into a cackle so maniacal, the birds lined up on the top of the cowshed almost tripped over themselves in their anxiety to get away.

  I gave a startled laugh, never having thought Lata’s obsession more than a joke.

  Malli clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Headmaster garu’s eyes darted from Lakshmi garu to Ammamma, but my grandmother was of no help; she was quivering like a woman in direct contact with an exposed electrical wire. Soon the two women were clutching at their sides, gasping from laughing. “This is the best laugh I’ve had in years,” Ammamma said, when she’d regained some control.

  Headmaster garu’s lips tightened.

  Ammamma wiped away her tears with the edge of her sari. Sniffing, she said, "What is a girl to do with all that education – a doctor, no less?”