And so the happy couple weds.
Ammamma sat stiffly behind the couple, not looking at Lata. The groom’s parents sat to a side, sneaking awed glances at me every so often. Lakshmi garu and Murty garu were officiating as parents of the bride; as a widow, Ammamma couldn’t be part of anything auspicious.
Kondal Rao’s henchmen walked around, occasionally bowing at me, making sure everyone knew of their boss’s connection to me. My devotees sat on thick, woven cotton rugs. Only a hundred odd guests had been invited by the bride’s or the groom’s side. The rest had been rounded up by Kondal Rao as a show of strength.
Each time I thought of that man, my blood pressure spiked. The sudden, and increasingly frequent, violent feelings within me ended up leaving me terrified. I lived in fear of losing control, of lashing out at whomever crossed my path, of ripping apart everything around me. The next time someone touched my feet, I feared doing them grievous harm. Sometimes my head felt ready to explode with all the anger that had no expression, all the sorrow that had no resolution. I was desperate to give this all up and hurtle down the highway to Hyderabad, to Srikar.
I watched the wedding rituals, trying to take in deep breaths without drawing attention to myself. I rubbed a hand across the back of my neck to loosen the tension. Migraine. A devotee sprang up, palms of his hands joined together. “Ammavaru, what is your desire?”
Was the Goddess allowed aspirin?
I thought not. I waved him away.
“Melam,” the priest shouted. The three snoring musicians, who’d been curled up on the floor, recovering from an all-night wedding, rose up in one fluid motion and assumed their positions. Sounds of the sannai rent the air in under thirty seconds. The bride and groom pressed the cumin-jaggery mixture on the top of each other’s heads. The priests chanted hymns at a shout, trying to make themselves heard over the loud music. The sannai players blew louder. Turmeric coated rice was showered on the newlywed couple. Job done, the musicians set their sannais on the floor, and went back to sleep. The couple was married. The wedding was over, but the rituals would continue.
There was only so much I could take. I got up to go. My entire retinue hurried up along with me. I stifled a sigh.
“Pullamma!” Lata called across the room. “Bless us before you go.”
I swallowed a surge of resentment. Like Lakshmi garu, Lata seemed to revel in my new role. She made sure everyone was always aware of her relationship to me. Unlike Chinni’s mother, Lata liked the attention my ‘powers’ brought her.
I waited for the newlyweds to come up to me. I blessed them, and stalked out.
My entourage rushed to catch up.
We proceeded the one kilometre to Ammamma’s in a four Ambassador convoy. Once there, I was helped out of the car by a devotee. He held a long, ornamental umbrella high above my head to protect me from the sun as I walked across the courtyard. Another helped me onto an intricately carved bench swing, fortunately more comfortable than the chair at the wedding. She helped tuck my feet beneath me. A third devotee pushed the swing in gentle rhythm, while yet another fanned me with a palm-leaf. Power cuts were on four hours each day, so each devotee took a thirty minute shift. Kondal Rao had promised to speak to the local electrical substation to make sure I was exempt from this foolishness, but till that happened, the fanning would continue.
The devotees were alert to my smallest need. They’d have fanned me through the night, had I allowed it. Hard as I tried to appreciate their selflessness, this near constant attention to my comforts drove me crazy. Unfortunately, the devotees took it as a personal affront if I declined their services.
But, now, too restless for politeness, I got down from the swing and walked in to the house, indicating I was to be left alone. Closing the door, I paced about, waiting for Ammamma to send Lata off to her husband’s house, and return home.
Three hours later, the door rattled. With great relief I let Ammamma in.
She sank to the mat. “I’m glad the wedding’s out of the way.”
“Did you talk to Kondal Rao?”
“I did.”
At her tone, I said sharply, “He won’t let me leave?”
“He said you can leave whenever you want. According to him it’s less headache for him if you go into hiding.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I told him you couldn’t leave openly. The devotees won’t let you go.” Her lips quivered.
“So?”
“He said he didn’t have the time for trivial issues. Then he left.”
><
The phone, newly installed, rang. I knew better than to answer my own phone. Yet another devotee ran up with it, the long extension cord trailing.
I reached for the phone, hand trembling. Srikar, or Kondal Rao? I waved everyone away, waiting till they closed the door behind them.
“Hello?”
“Pullamma, it is me,” Srikar said.
“You can’t call here!”
“Don’t worry, no one’s listening.”
“How can you be sure?” All long distances calls were routed through the operator, a terrible gossip.
“I’m in the village,” Srikar said. “Is your entourage around?”
“No.” He’d come all the way to the village just to make a phone call? I looked at Srikar’s mirrored globe suspended from the ceiling, wishing he were here, instead.
“The way things have been going, I wasn’t sure the wedding would actually happen,” Srikar said. “Now that it is out of the way…”
“Thank god, you’re here. Your grandfather refused to help me get away.”
Srikar was too decent a man to say I told you so. “For my grandfather to act honourably would have been out of character.” He hesitated, then rushed into speech. “Now that Lata is married, why don’t we take Ammamma and disappear? I have a job offer from a construction company in Dubai. I’ll get our passports made. Let’s leave all of this behind. We can make a new life there.”
“How will we get away? They won’t even let me leave the compound.”
“We’ll work out a plan.”
I started to cry. “Yemandi, please. Do it as soon as possible. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”
Chapter 28
Things Change
Srikar’s escape plan gave me renewed hope. Everything became easier to bear now that there was an end in sight. I got up at 4:30 a.m., performed my prayers, practiced meditation under Ammamma’s guidance, had breakfast, saw devotees, had lunch. Then Ammamma and I locked ourselves in our private sanctuary. If not for this, I might have gone mad. Ammamma sensed this and kept everyone out, no exceptions. Other than Lata, that is. Nothing could have kept her out.
I wished I could have seen Malli before we left India forever. But her in-laws were so demanding, they would never allow her to visit. In my uncharitable moments I wished Lata’s in-laws were half as demanding, but they were too awed by her connection to me. Regardless, she was good training ground for me to maintain my stoic facade.
Tiring as my days were, the nights were worse. That was when I allowed myself to think of Srikar. I worried constantly that something would go wrong with the Dubai plan – maybe they would withdraw the offer, maybe they wouldn’t allow his family to accompany him, maybe they would deny Ammamma the visa.
With the fears came the tears. Rigid as my self-control was in public, in private it was virtually non-existent. Many nights I whipped myself into a frenzy of panic, unable to calm myself down.
“I don’t know if I have the energy to keep this up,” I said to Ammamma after a particularly strenuous day. “I am so tired all the time; I can’t sleep at night. I don’t know how Gurus keep up with this schedule.” We were in our private quarters, away from judging eyes. That was the hardest part for me, the fact that people’s eyes were always trained on me. Every movement of mine, every gesture, every blink was analyzed for divine significance.
When we’d talked last, Srikar said the next time
he phoned, he hoped it would be with good news. It was a week since he’d called. I collapsed on the bed. Lata was back on one of her increasingly frequent visits, and it wasn’t helping. I had no idea what went on in her marriage, why she had so much time to direct my life. She didn’t talk about it, and I didn’t ask.
I lay back and stretched out, looking at the mirrored globe Srikar had bought me, trying to derive comfort from it. Why hadn’t he called? “I am so tired. I don’t know if I can get up tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you get someone to help?” Lata said. “At least ten of your hangers-on will jump at the chance.”
“How?” Ammamma asked, addressing the wall behind Lata’s head; she no longer talked directly to Lata. “Get a substitute Goddess?”
Lata ignored Ammamma and bounced onto the bed, next to me. “What’s the big thing about privacy anyway? I would love to have someone wait on me hand and foot.”
Ammamma pointedly turned her back on her youngest granddaughter. “Let me get you some idlis,” she said, heading to the kitchen. “I made your favourite chutney.” She returned with a plate piled with idlis, and bent forward to help me up.
“I’m so tired, Ammamma,” I said, voice slurring. “I just want to sleep.”
“I’d let you,” she said, sounding apologetic, “but you are losing weight.”
I reached for the idlis. Feeling a sudden surge of nausea, I covered my mouth with a hand, and ran to the bathroom. I retched violently till I had emptied the contents of my stomach.
Ammamma rushed in. “The strain is getting to you, Child. You need to take better care of yourself. There is sickness in the air.”
I washed up, and crawled back into bed.
“You need to eat at least one idli, Child. It will help settle your stomach.”
“I can’t,” I pleaded, “I can’t even bear to be in the same room as food.”
“How long since your period?” Ammamma suddenly asked.
“I’ve missed two,” I said slowly.
We looked at each other in mounting horror.
“Oh, no!” Ammamma felt blindly for the chair behind her, and sank into it.
Lata sat up. “What were you thinking, Pullamma? Haven’t our elders said that you should never get pregnant in Ashadha Masam? If the child is born deformed, you will have only yourself to blame.”
Newlyweds traditionally stayed apart in Ashadha Masam – the inauspicious period in June-July, so a child wouldn’t result. Some people believed that a child conceived in Ashadha Masam, and therefore due in Chaitra Masam – sometime in March – would be born handicapped.
Ammamma leaned over, grabbed Lata’s arm and yanked hard.
“What?” Lata said. “I’m only telling the truth.” For someone so against traditional wisdom, Lata was certainly spouting a lot of it lately.
“If you want to open your mouth,” Ammamma said through clenched teeth, “say only good things. Remember, the tathastu devatalu are always around.”
Tathastu devatalu. The so-be-it Gods. Elders said that these Gods made words leaving one’s mouth come true.
Lata snorted.
Wordlessly Ammamma pulled Lata down from the bed, dragged her to the door, opened it and shoved her out into the courtyard. It was a measure of her outrage that she didn’t bother to see if anyone was watching. Shutting the door on Lata, she sagged against it. “What have you done, Child?” she asked, face ashen.
“A baby!” I said, closing my eyes and leaning against the headboard. I felt the beginnings of a smile.
“No one knows you are married. How will you explain away a baby?”
“We have a plan,” I told Ammamma. I couldn’t stop smiling at the thought of the baby. “Srikar is working on it.” Srikar and I had decided to hold off telling Ammamma about the Dubai plan till everything was in place, but things had changed.
“You are fools if you think you can escape Kondal Rao’s clutches.”
“Weren’t you the one who told Srikar and me to disappear?”
“Weren’t you the one who told me that he’d never let you go?”
“I can’t live like this, Ammamma.” I put a protective hand on my belly.
“Think,” Ammamma begged, “this isn’t something you’ll be able to talk your way through.”
“I don’t talk in public.”
“Bah! You know what I mean.”
“Don’t worry, Ammamma. It is early yet. Things will fall in place long before my due date.” I lay back and stretched luxuriously. Now that I knew the cause of my near constant tiredness, I suddenly felt energetic.
Ammamma sank to the floor and fell against the door. “Oh Lord of the Seven Hills! Oh Yedukondalavada! Watch over these young innocents.”
I got down from bed, settled on the chair and reached for the phone.
Ammamma sat up, face alarmed. “What are you doing?”
“Calling my husband.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Ammamma shrieked.
“Considering this is his baby,” I said, “don’t you think he has the right to know?”
“What about the operator? She’ll be listening to everything you say.”
“Make the connection for me, Ammamma. Please?” I’d just have to be careful.
Muttering under her breath, Ammamma booked the trunk call.
The call came through ten minutes later. After Srikar and I had spoken of minor matters, I prepared to give him the news. Suddenly, I felt embarrassed. Maybe I should have asked Ammamma. “Uh.” I stopped, not sure how to proceed.
“What is it?”
“You know those plans discussed in the park... in the evenings... on the swing?”
“Yes?”
“Plans have to be put off, things have changed. In a good way.”
“Oh no!”
I was so shaken by his unguarded reaction that I dropped the phone. The call disconnected. Despite several tries, the operator was unable to connect me back. Not wanting to face Ammamma, I got into the bed, and turned off the light.
“Pullamma?” Ammamma whispered about twenty minutes later.
“What?” I asked, trying to sound sleepy.
“Srikar phoned Lakshmi garu’s house. He is on his way.”
Chapter 29
The Escape to Dubai
I ran a cloth over the newly acquired chairs and flower vase. “Move,” I told Lata. “I need to dust.” The ashram was shut down. No one to tell me what I could, or couldn’t, do. I’d already prepared the delicacies Srikar liked. Now I was cleaning, making sure everything was perfect for my husband.
“It’s only your husband that’s coming, not some royalty.”
Ignoring her, I dragged a chair, and started on the cobwebs.
Jerking her head at me, Lata asked Ammamma, “Doesn’t she have devoted followers for this sort of thing?”
Ammamma gave a noncommittal shrug.
“Stop fidgeting, will you?” Lata said to me. “You are driving me crazy.”
“When Srikar comes, you will greet him, then leave,” Ammamma said.
Part of me wished I could leave, too. Srikar’s abrupt response last night had been as wounding as it had been unexpected. I didn’t know what to make of his reaction.
“Why can’t I stay back?” Lata asked with a pout. “This is the first time I will be meeting my brother-in-law formally. I want to see his reaction, too.” She said to Ammamma, “You will be there.”
“I wish I could have stayed out. This is, after all, a private matter between husband and wife. But we can’t afford to give people the chance to talk.”
Ammamma had ordered the ashram closed to the public on the pretext that Ammavaru – that would be me – was going into a state of meditation. Only the priest was permitted to come in for the twice-daily prayers. Even he wasn’t allowed access into my sanctuary, though.
There was a knock on the door. We stiffened. “It’s only me,” Lakshmi garu said. Ammamma opened the door. Srikar stood behind Lakshmi garu.
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bsp; I smiled at him tremulously; how much I’d missed him.
He smiled back.
Ammamma cleared her throat.
Suddenly conscious of our audience, I jerked my attention from him. I introduced my sister to my husband.
“This is the grand passion of your life, hanh?” Lata looked him over. “The one that keeps you awake at nights?”
There was shocked silence. Lakshmi garu clapped a hand to her mouth.
“Lata!” Ammamma looked mortified.
“Not bad,” Lata said. “Better than what you saddled me with.”
I felt terrible embarrassment on my sister’s behalf. She seemed to think being married entitled her to speak her mind.
“Leave.” Ammamma grabbed Lata by the arm. “Don’t come back before tomorrow.”
After Ammamma had shut the door, Srikar bent to touch Ammamma’s feet. Ammamma touched his head gently and said, “I wish I could give you more than blessings, Son.”
“Right now that’s what I need the most.”
“You youngsters go and talk in the bedroom.” Ammamma settled in the front room.
As we stood hesitating, Ammamma urged, “Go, Children. And shut the door.”
Slightly embarrassed, I followed Srikar into the bedroom, and closed the door behind me.
As we reached for each other, I said, “I’m so glad you’re here. I missed you so much.”
“Me, too.”
I held him, not wanting to let go. But the longer he stayed, the riskier it was. Taking a deep breath, I said, “You haven’t said anything about the baby.”
“I want this baby, too,” Srikar said. “I can’t tell you how much.”
But he didn’t seem nearly as excited as I was. I felt a little let down. Was he upset that we had deviated from the map of our lives – college first, then kids? Or perhaps his first reaction was an unguarded honest reaction, and he did not want kids at all? The last thought jarred me enough that I found myself unable to ask what he really felt about the baby. Some things were better left unsaid.
Tell A Thousand Lies Page 14
