Tell A Thousand Lies

by Rasana Atreya

  He smoothed out the creases, sat on it and held out a hand.

  “What are you going to do to me?” I bit my inner cheek, trying not to show my terror.

  Srikar smiled. “Nothing you don’t want me to do.”

  “That isn’t what Ammamma said. She said, if you beat me, I have to put up with it. If you … you … whatever you do, I have to close my eyes tight, grind down my teeth, and bear it.”

  Srikar laughed. “I won’t beat you, I promise. And you won’t have to do any teeth grinding, either.”

  I didn’t move.

  He held out an arm. “Come and sit next to me, at least.”

  “You won’t beat me?”

  He shook his head, his lips twitching.

  I sat as far away from him as I could, my chin on upraised knees, hands clenched.

  “Relax.” He fluffed his pillow, and lay down. “Beating you isn’t what I had in mind.”

  I pulled my pillow away from him, and lay down at the very edge of the mat, feeling terrible embarrassment.

  “Can I hold your hand?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “No, you don’t have to,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice.

  ‘Be a dutiful wife,’ Ammamma’s voice in my head commanded. I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I whispered.

  He pulled me closer.

  I let him. My face flushed.

  He touched me slowly, looking into my face. His breath felt uncomfortably close.

  I shut my eyes tightly, feeling funny. This wasn’t anything like Ammamma had warned. This was a good funny.

  ><

  I opened my eyes. Through the rusted mosquito netting I could see pink streaks across the sky. I scrambled up. Grabbing fresh clothes, I pulled the door to our flat closed and hurried to the bathroom at one end of the corridor. A quick bath and I was back. I pushed the door open. Srikar looked up. He’d freshened up, too. Probably in the bathroom at the other end of the corridor. Unable to meet his eyes, I closed the door. Wordlessly, he pulled me into his arms. I buried my face in his shoulder, feeling a smile tremble on my lips.

  Chapter 17

  Everything is New

  Everything in my new life was different – exciting most of the time, overwhelming occasionally. The faster pace of the city. Living in quarters so close that we could hear raised voices from the flat next door. Movie songs fed through outdoor loudspeakers for major Hindu festivals. The amplified prayer call from the nearby mosque at dawn. Over Christmas and Easter, the Church joined in. Auto-rickshaws darting through traffic, unmindful of traffic rules. Cinemas in real theatres. How I wished I could have shared this with Chinni. This, and my newfound knowledge about the pleasures of marriage.

  Back when I was still a giggly teen, when Chinni and I were still best friends, when the most vexing problem in our life was which of Chiranjeevi’s many movies we liked best, my friend and I had giggled and speculated about what exactly happened between a married couple. I hoped Chinni hadn’t had to do any teeth grinding.

  In the village, getting up early was something I’d hated. Now I was eager to begin the day, make tasty food for Srikar, iron his clothes, do all those little things a wife did for her husband. I felt great pleasure in having the right to touch him on the shoulder to draw his attention, ask his opinion on a new recipe.

  We shopped together, filled water together, laughed together. While I took care of the cooking, Srikar cut the vegetables for me. The first time he picked up a knife, I was shocked. “What are you doing? This is my work!”

  “I’m just cutting vegetables, not putting flowers in my hair.”

  “How can you joke about such a thing? What if Geeta or Sandhya see you?” Sandhya was our neighbour on the other side.

  “Pulla, you need to stop worrying about others, start living for yourself.”

  Bah! What did men know of such things? I made sure the front door was locked when we cooked. Didn’t want anyone to think I was harassing my husband. I watched as he put the milk to boil, another thing he did in the kitchen.

  “What?” he said.

  “I can’t believe you are… his grandson.”

  He gave a short laugh. “I grew up seeing his terrible treatment of my grandmother, as well his own daughter. Then I started to hear things about him that no child should hear – the beatings of people who got in his way, the breaking of bones of others who displeased him, and so on. My grandmother said I must always remember, what kind of a person I became was up to me. I’ve tried to be as unlike my grandfather as possible.”

  I was glad he was a good person, but it embarrassed me when he did things that were women’s work – he folded the bedclothes and put them away. Once he even came shopping with me for utensils, helping me select a few. While he was paying for them, I slipped into the shop next door, a bangle store.

  “What are you looking at?”

  I turned at Srikar’s voice.

  “Oh, nothing.” I stepped away.

  “Madam was admiring the bangles,” the shopkeeper said.

  “I... just... I don’t need any. Really.” Please God, don’t let him think I am greedy.

  “But you have such plain ones, no design, no nothing,” the shopkeeper said. “Madam, take it from me. Nowhere in this whole city will you find such a good collection of bangles.”

  “Why don’t you buy some?” Srikar asked.

  I flushed.

  “Which ones was my wife looking at?” Srikar asked the shopkeeper.

  The man laid out a few.

  “Wrap them up,” Srikar said.

  Feeling a flush of happiness, I took the package.

  As I was putting it in my shoulder bag, a man exclaimed, “Ammavaru!” and dropped at my feet.

  I froze.

  The shopkeeper’s eyes went round.

  “Don’t bother my wife!” Srikar grabbed my arm, and pulled me away. Turning to the shopkeeper he said, “All kinds of mental people you run into.”

  The shopkeeper nodded in sympathy.

  The man on the ground looked up in confusion.

  “Don’t look back,” Srikar said to me under his breath, as he marched me to the bus stop.

  I was so shaken up by this incident that I shivered all the way home. For a week, I had nightmares.

  ><

  I stopped going out, fearing I might run into people who’d known me as a Goddess. I spent time with Geeta, instead.

  “Why do you patronize that vegetable fellow?” Geeta said. “He’s robbing you.”

  I bought vegetables from the seller who came by each morning with his vegetable laden pushcart – a rolling wooden platform on four slender wheels. He was often accompanied by his wife, who sold leafy greens from the huge wicket basket she carried balanced on her head.

  “Go the wholesale market,” Geeta said. “Murali buys vegetables there. Much cheaper.”

  “But it is out of the way for Srikar.” I couldn’t go out. The risk was too great.

  “Take a bus and go yourself. Just because your husband doesn’t demand accounts from you, doesn’t mean you spend his money recklessly.”

  “Why don’t you come with me?”

  Geeta leaned forward, took a quick look over her shoulder and hissed, “The devil who resides in my house won’t let me go.”

  “I’m glad I don’t have a mother-in-law sitting on my head.” I shuddered. Chinni and I had discussed endless strategies for dealing with mean mothers-in-law. How lucky that I didn’t need to bother.

  I set off to the bus stop that afternoon, feeling very grown up. I was tired of hiding in the house. I’d surprise Srikar with the money I saved. How proud he would be of me.

  At the market, I was overwhelmed, almost choking on the smell of vegetables ripening under the sun. And the shouting and haggling… I wanted to clap my hands over my ears.

  We had a wholesale market in the village, too, and many times larger, but this place packed so much in such a tight space.

  Mini mountains
of vegetables on burlap sacks. Narrow lanes. Vendors shouting out prices, each trying to outdo the other in convincing me that their produce and price were the best.

  For the first half hour all I did was wander, trying to get a sense of the place. “Amma, Amma,” the vegetable sellers shouted, waving their arms. “Come here, I will give you the best price. Nowhere else will you find such fresh vegetables.”

  I looked around, eyes darting, not sure where to begin. An old man squatted by his vegetables, smoking a beedi, blowing smoke rings in the air. He wasn’t demanding my attention, so I went across and picked up a snake gourd the size of Srikar’s arm.

  “How much?”

  “For you, my best price.”

  We haggled back and forth till we reached a price both of us could live with. I broke the vegetable into three pieces and put it in the plastic basket slung on my forearm. I moved on. An hour later my basket was overflowing, and I had to buy an additional bag for the extra vegetables. But the prices were so good!

  Not bad for a village girl. Smiling to myself I dragged the bags along to the bus stop. The street lamps had come on. The bus was pulling away as I reached the stop. With a sigh, I settled on the bench. The next bus lumbered up forty-five minutes later. It wound its way through the city before finally shuddering to a halt a ten minute walk from home. 8 o’clock! I hadn’t realized it was so late.

  “There you are.” Srikar hurried forward and took the bags from me. “I’m glad you told Geeta where you were going. When you weren’t on the previous bus, I got worried.”

  He’d waited forty-five minutes at the bus stop! Warmth flooded my chest. I’d happily give up my dreams of the municipal water connection just to be with Srikar.

  Speaking of the municipal water connection, everything else might have changed, but the one constant in my life was the water situation. Municipal water was turned on between 10 p.m. and midnight in our not-so-well-to-do corner of the city. The owner of our building was too cheap to provide a motor to pump water up to each of our flats, so the women gathered by the municipal tap by 9:45 p.m.

  “You are all young, can afford to go to bed late,” old Rukkamma said, invariably pushing her way to the front of the queue.

  “Gossipy old crone,” Geeta whispered, not daring to say it to her face. Any gossip worth knowing in Madhuban Apartments filtered its way through old Rukkamma.

  As we women awaited our turn at the tap, the men sat on a couple of discarded coir cots, smoking hand-rolled beedis, catching up on the day’s gossip. A lot of business got transacted around the municipal tap despite the lateness of the hour. Enterprising vegetable sellers brought fresh vegetables in straw baskets balanced on their heads. Banana vendors came with pushcarts, buyers of used newspaper wobbled by on loaded bicycles, calling out – ‘pay-paaaar-ye’ for paper, women came with shiny steel utensils, ready to bargain them away in exchange for good quality used-clothing.

  Every so often, a bajji vendor swung by with his rickety, wooden pushcart, frying us kerosene-scented spicy mirchi bajjis on the spot, in a shallow pan balanced on a grimy kerosene fuelled stove. Sandhya, Geeta and I complained about his outrageous prices, but bought the savouries anyway, bouncing the hot bajjis between our hands till they cooled enough to eat.

  Sometimes fights broke out if the municipal tap on the road, meant for the adjoining building, decided not to dispense water for the evening. People from that building tried to push their way into our courtyard to get to our tap; men from our building blocked their way, insisting their women be the first in line. On those days we finished up as late as 2 a.m.

  Even without disruptions, it was close to 11:00 p.m. by the time our turn at the tap came. Then it was multiple trips up the stairs, pots resting on our hips, before we had enough water for washing and cooking. I had to climb two flights of stairs to get to our flat. It was hard work, but over shared hardships and endless cups of tea, a friendship developed between Geeta and me.

  My relationship with Srikar also blossomed. He and I started to get more comfortable with each other. “Yemandi?” I said to him one day, my mind on the latest recipe I was practicing.

  “Hyderabad is a big city, you know,” he teased. “Not your little village in the interior. Here it is quite acceptable to call one’s husband by name.”

  I smiled at his dear face, his irresistible one-sided smile, that stubborn lock of hair a constant over his brow. I wasn’t so brazen as to call him by name. He gave me an affectionate hug, probably not expecting a response. We settled next to the window, waiting out the rattling train.

  “Do you miss the village?”

  “A little bit,” I said, snuggling up to him. “I feel bad leaving Ammamma with all those devotees, and two granddaughters who might never get married because I ran away.”

  “Nothing you could have done.” He put a finger under my chin and raised my face. “Miss being a Goddess? I can’t give you all that money or jewellery, you know.”

  “I have everything I need right here.” I burrowed my face in his shoulder.

  Chapter 18

  Plans For the Future

  Our three-storey building had six flats to each floor, a bathroom on either end of the corridor. Two bathrooms shared between six families. Each bathroom comprised a 4x4 square to wash clothes and bathe in, and a 3x3 square which housed the toilet. Each with its own door. A rusty sink was bolted to the wall between the two doors. Common bathrooms or not, water problems or not, I had no idea it was possible to be this happy.

  In my contentment I’d think – if my looks and my name were the price I had to pay to attain Srikar, so be it. Then someone would comment on the colour or my skin, or ask how much dowry I’d brought, and suddenly I’d be wracked by doubts. Did Srikar look at other girls, fair-skinned, and with dowry, and feel cheated? Was I his sacrifice for the sins of his grandfather? He’d never behaved in a manner to cause this doubt, but we women were simple folk. What did we know of the pressures of men?

  Srikar had been forced to leave his well-paying job as a site supervisor with a big construction company. The only work he could find in a hurry was as assistant to the supervisor for another site on the outskirts of town. The new job meant more work with less pay, but that didn’t bother him. He had big plans for our future. We walked to the park near our house after dark, when the kids of the locality were long in bed. Srikar leaned against a metal slide, while I settled on a swing, and swung my way through grandiose plans.

  “We’ll form our own construction company,” he said. “We won’t have to be at the beck and call of others. Let us not rush into having children, Pullamma.”

  I blushed.

  “You should go to college, get a degree. Then we will work together, and build the best company in India.”

  I was endeared by his silliness. I knew my station in life was to bear heirs; without a male child, I was nothing. That I had studied up to 12th class was unusual in itself. In the village the search for a groom began as soon as a girl hit puberty.

  Back in the village, when Headmaster garu suggested a second time that Lata be allowed to go on to college, Ammamma had pulled the two of us out of school right in the middle of the school year. It took a solemn promise from him that he wouldn’t be putting anymore silly notions into our heads before she would allow us appear for the final exams of 12th class. After that, she wasn’t open to negotiation.

  So, of course, I knew Srikar was teasing.

  What I did do was practise my housekeeping skills. By the time Srikar got home from work, I was ready with hot food. Because he was so appreciative of anything I cooked, I started experimenting – nothing out of the ordinary, just tastier ways of making the same pulusu, pulihora and payasam. Soon I was cooking so much that the women in our building, and then the women in our locality, started ordering food from me. No one had ever expected anything of me before, so I bloomed from this unexpected attention. I pushed myself to cook better and better. It didn’t hurt that Srikar was so encouraging. I was p
roud the money I earned was a welcome addition to our household budget.

  Then it occurred to me to try my hand at pickle-making. At the municipal tap one night I made the suggestion. “We have eighteen flats here, at least eighteen women. Instead of making pickles in each house, why don’t we get together and make pickle in the courtyard? The area is big enough to dry the mangoes, and do the pounding.”

  “Why?” old Rukkamma asked.

  “Because the labour involved will seem lighter if all of us do it together.”

  “And it will be fun.” Geeta clapped her hands in glee.

  Old Rukkamma looked me up and down. “You’re what – eighteen years old?”

  “Sixteen,” I said.

  “Sixteen!” She snorted. “And you are going to teach us how to make pickles? Child, I’m four times your age. I’ve forgotten more about pickle-making than you’ll ever learn.”

  “Well, I want to join in,” Geeta said.

  I gave her a smile of thanks.

  There was a chorus of acceptances from the other women. After we finished with our water duties, we settled on the steps. There were ten of us, not including Old Rukkamma.

  “I can’t wait,” the old Rukkamma said, spitting out red paan. “This should be fun.”

  “Ignore her,” Geeta whispered.

  I said to the women, “We’ll share the costs between the ten of us. If we allocate twenty mangoes per family, that should last us the year.”

  The women nodded. We calculated the amount of ingredients we’d need. Early next morning, Sandhya and I set off for the market. We bought vast quantities of red chillies, rock salt, mustard powder, fenugreek, asafoetida, turmeric and sesame seed oil.

  Over the next three days, we spread out thick sheets of plastic in the central courtyard. Two women were assigned to the mortar and pestle. After the women in charge of preparing the chillies cleaned them, pulled off the stems and sun dried them, the women in charge of pounding took over. Huge amounts of chillies were poured into the two-foot diameter mortar. One woman stood on either side. The first woman pounded once with the four foot long pestle, then passed it over to the other woman. Back and forth the pestle went, in rhythm with the singing women, till the red chillies were reduced to a fine powder. Same with the rock salt. Then the turmeric roots. We pounded and sieved, then pounded some more before sun-drying them. Finally, the ingredients were ready.