by Anita Desai
Mama lent one of her own saris to Uma for the occasion—a cream georgette with little sprigs of pink and blue roses embroidered all along the border. ('Old-fashioned!' sniffed Aruna. 'A granny sari!') She also did Uma's plaits up in a roll on her neck and stuck a pink flower into the roll with a long pin. 'We should powder your face a little,' she said, peering into Uma's face with an expression of dissatisfaction. 'It might cover some of the pimples. Why have you got so many pimples today? They weren't there yesterday,' she accused her.
'I get new ones all the time, Mama,' Uma said, then cried 'Ow!' as Mama rubbed some of them too hard with a flat powder puff that smelt unpleasantly of stale perspiration.
'Hold still. You have to look nice,' Mama said grimly.
'Why, Mama?' Uma squirmed, and shut her eyes as clouds of powder flew around, ferociously scented. 'It is only Joshi Aunty's friend—'
'And her brother from Kanpur,' Mama added significantly. 'He is in the leather business,' and she scrubbed at Uma's face as if it were a piece of hide to be offered for examination.
But it was not only leather goods that were being proffered; Uma must present other accomplishments as well. 'Now if Mrs Syal asks if you made the samosas, you must say yes.'
'Samosas!' squealed Uma, her hand flying to the most magnetic of the pimples now that Mama had stopped scrubbing at them.
'Yes, we are having samosas for tea, and barfi.'
I made barfi also?'
'You did,' Mama threatened her with a fierce look. All this work, and nothing to show for it—that was Mama's fate. How Mama had always envied Lila Aunty for having a daughter like Anamika, a model of perfection like Anamika. No, that was not for her, she sighed.
'What if she asks me how? I won't know!' Uma cried.
'Why don't you know? Didn't I tell you to go to the kitchen and learn these things? For so many years I have been telling you, and did you listen? No, you were at the convent, singing those Christian hymns. You were playing games with that Anglo-Indian teacher showing you how to wear skirts and jump around. Play, play, play, that is all you ever did. Will that help you now?'
Uma would have protested if her mother had not been manhandling her quite roughly, pushing very small bangles over her large hands and onto her wrists, and even shoving her own small ruby ring onto her finger. Uma had always loved that ruby ring and tried to submit to the torture without crying, but when she looked at the swollen finger and the bluish lump caused by its tightness, she could not help worrying how she would pull it off after the tea party was over.
AH through that painful afternoon, she sat trying to tear it off her finger. When her mother threw her a warning look from behind the tea tray, she stopped for a few minutes, then started again, desperately. To begin with, the visitors' attention was directed respectfully towards the mother but when it eventually came to rest, as it had to, on Uma, the girl's frantic movements could not be ignored. Finally, Mrs Syal, a large young woman who had eyed every item of Uma's clothing very closely, said, 'It is a nice ring.'
Uma, looking down at it as if it were the first time she had seen it, went red all over her face and gasped, 'My mother's.'
'Have another barfi, Mrs Syal,' said Mama, and persuaded Uma to get up and pass the plate with the sweets around again.
'Mmm, nice,' said Mrs Syal, picking up another and examining it closely. 'You made?' she asked the space just above it.
'Uma—Uma did,' Mama said, smiling ingratiatingly.
'Nice,' said Mrs Syal again, 'but my brother, he does not take sweets.'
'No? Oh, take a samosa then, take a samosa—very spicy,' cried Mama, and handed the plate of samosas to Uma to hand to the young man who sat silently and phlegmatically in a large arm chair at the other end of the room.
Uma gave up wrenching at the ring and did as she was told, and if the samosas slid and slipped all over the plate, at least none landed on the floor. She managed to cross the whole length of the room in her unaccustomed sari and offer him the samosas without an accident. Then all he did was shake his head and refuse them. He had been twisting a handkerchief in his hands throughout the party and Uma could not help noticing how dirty and ragged a piece of cloth it was. It made her look at the owner with a stir of sympathy, but when she did she could not see any sign that it was reciprocated.
The three guests left, climbing into the tonga at the gate, and Mrs Syal told Mama, 'Very nice tea, very nice,' before she left, so that Mama nearly bowed in gratitude. She turned around to her daughters, letting out a long slow exhalation of relief. Now they could wait for the return invitation, she told them. But, unfortunately, none came, and they heard no more from the Syals. The weeks went by with decreasing hope and finally Mama relinquished it altogether, as painfully as Uma had the ring drawn from her finger. 'He must not have liked Uma,' she said bitterly, and it was not clear at whom the bitterness was directed. Then a message was brought them by their neighbour, Mrs Joshi. She pushed her way through the hedge one day, her hair streaming over her shoulders because she had washed it that morning and it was not quite dry. 'I am coming like this only', she gasped as she climbed the steps to the veranda, placing a hand on each thigh in turn as she climbed them, 'because I must tell you—'
'The Syals sent you?' Mama cried at once, quick to pick up the tone of emergency. 'Uma, go get tea for Aunty,' she hastily ordered.
'No, no tea for me, please—it is my fast day.' Mrs Joshi sank into a basket chair and mopped her face with the end of her sari. Then she looked up, first at Mama and then at Uma. 'How can I tell you? But yesterday Mrs Syal came to see me and—you know what she said?'
'What? What?' Mama cried eagerly, swinging rapidly back and forth on the swing. When Mrs Joshi bit her tongue and held back, she worried, 'She did not like our —?'
Mrs Joshi touched her ears to show that what she had heard had scandalised her. 'He liked—he liked—but who do you think he liked?' She leant forward and murmured into Mama's ear: 'Aruna. He wanted Mrs Syal to ask for Aruna, not Uma.'
Uma was standing behind the swing, watching and waiting, and Mrs Joshi looked up to see if she had heard. She had not, for all her efforts to do so, but at once Mama gave a scream: 'Aruna? Aruna? He asked for her?' and it was no use Mrs Joshi clapping her hand over her mouth and rolling her eyes towards Uma.
Uma gave a startled look and hurried away. Mama did not notice, or care. She was too scandalised, too outraged. 'What? What? He said so? Does he know how old Aruna is? Thirteen! And he dares to ask for the younger daughter when we show him the elder? What kind of family does he think we are?'
'Shh, shh,' Mrs Joshi begged her. 'I told them already. I told Mrs Syal—'
But Mama would not be stopped. 'Why did you send these people to us? Such people! You think we would marry our daughter into a family like that? Hah?'
When Uma returned with a tray of glasses of iced water, she found her mother and Mrs Joshi quarelling so loudly that neither paid any attention to her or the iced water and she set down the tray and went into her room and stayed there all morning, watching Aruna paint her fingernails and then her toenails with a bottle of pink polish. At lunch Mama said nothing of the incident but kept a gloomy silence and threw significant looks at Aruna, partly in accusation and partly in reappraisal.
AT thirteen, Aruna still had thin brown legs and wore her hair plaited and tied in loops over her ears with large ribbons. Even though she had to dress in the faded blue cotton slip ordained by the convent, and white not coloured ribbons, there was already something about the way she tossed her head when she saw a man looking at her, with a sidelong look of both scorn and laughter, and the way her foot tapped and her legs changed position, that might have alerted the family to what it could expect. Even if Mama was indignant in refusing, she was impressed too, and—Uma saw—respectful of this display of her younger daughter's power of attraction.
By the time Aruna was fourteen she was rebelling against the blue cotton tunic and the white hair ribbons. At every opportuni
ty she would shed them and change into flowered silk salwars. 'Silk!' Uma would exclaim, and Papa would sit up and take notice, frowning, but Mama was inclined to indulge Aruna and perhaps realised, instinctively, that if she did, there would be rewards to reap. So Aruna fluttered about in flowered silk, and the hair ribbons were replaced with little shiny plastic clips and clasps, and flowers that she picked from the dusty shrubs and hedges. When Uma was still watching to see that Arun did not crawl off the veranda and break his neck or put knitting needles or naphthalene balls in his mouth, Aruna was already climbing into bicycle rickshaws and going off to the cinema—with girl friends from school, she said. That was quite true, but she did not mention the young men who took the seats behind them, or even beside them, tempestuously throwing out a knee, an elbow, or even a hand at times, and contriving to touch the little, flustered, excited creatures, then followed them home on their bicycles, weaving through the traffic and singing ardently along the way.
While Mama searched energetically for a husband for Uma, families were already 'making enquiries' about Aruna. Yet nothing could be done about them; it was imperative that Uma marry first. That was the only decent, the only respectable line of behaviour. That also explained why MamaPapa responded so eagerly to an advertisement in a Sunday newspaper placed by 'a decent family' in search of a bride for their only son. MamaPapa went together to meet them and found it was a cloth merchant's family from the bazaar which had recently begun to prosper and was building a new house on the outskirts of the city. They had purchased a large piece of land in what had formerly been a swamp but was being reclaimed by the municipality by filling it in with city refuse; it was now marked into plots and even had some gates and walls coming up to show the beginnings of urbanisation. The merchant's family had laid the foundation of what would clearly be a palatial dwelling compared to the cramped quarters they had occupied for generations in the city. But, the father explained—disarmingly—they could not proceed until they came into some money, and here the dowry mentioned by Papa would come in useful. He was being frank with Papa, but then it was Papa's daughter who would come to his house as a bride. Papa looked dubious at this confession, but Mama was so delighted by the sight of prospective prosperity that she could not be restrained. They themselves owned no house; Papa had always refused to move out of their rented one with which he was perfectly content, leaving Mama with an enormous, unfulfilled desire for property. Why should Uma not fulfil it if she could not? A negotiated sum was made over as dowry, and the engagement ceremony arranged simultaneously.
Uma was dressed in a new sari of rose-pink organza and was allowed to use lipstick for the first time. Even Aruna was impressed by the results, and hugged Uma spontaneously. The fiance proved quite presentable, to everyone's surprise. Uma did not exactly speak to him, but they looked at each other and she was able to persuade herself that he was not entirely reprehensible. She wished so much that he was not. When Aruna began on her usual line of fault-finding, Uma interrupted her with a 'Tchh! You're so critical, Aruna.'
It was thought that now they were engaged, they might meet a few times—after all, the merchant's family had shown such a desire to leave behind the confines of the bazaar and its old customs and traditions by moving to a brand-new suburb and, with it, a freer way of life—so Mama invited the family over—once, twice, thrice—only to be refused each time. She was puzzled and talked over her apprehensions with Papa who frowned deeply but saw marriage as a women's affair and left it to her. No more was heard from the merchant's family. When they went across to pick a date for the wedding, the merchant was not nearly so expansive and cordial as before. Seated cross-legged on a white sheet on the floor, his forehead freshly smeared with red powder after some religious ceremony he had just attended, he did not seem at all pleased to see them. Quite abruptly, drumming his fingers on his thigh, he informed them that his son had decided to go to Roorkee 'for higher education' and felt he should not be hampered by an early marriage at this stage and had asked for the engagement to be indefinitely postponed. If this did not suit them, they were free to break it off. Mama gasped, pressing her hand to her bosom with pain and horror, while Papa stammered, 'And the dowry? The dowry? What about that?' The merchant shifted into a more comfortable position, leaning back against a pile of white bolsters under a framed picture of the goddess Lakshmi and a cloud of incense, and told them that it had been spent on the house. How was he to know his son would change his mind? That was not what he had planned, and he had gone ahead and spent the money on building the house just as he had told MamaPapa he would—had he not? Suddenly he sat up and scowled, haranguing them: had he not? He had gone ahead with preparing a home for their daughter, but fate had willed it otherwise. Could one question fate? Could one? Mama, after a night of frenzied weeping and recrimination, went to Mrs Joshi to tell her how she had been cheated. After listening to her, Mrs Joshi went on calmly chopping betel nuts with her silver scissors, and said, 'If you had come to see me before you went into this, I would have warned you. That Goyal family—everyone knows they have played that trick before. Did they not do the same to the Gunga Mull family? How do you think they bought that land in Khushinagar? And started building such a posh house? The Gunga Mulls too handed over a dowry, and then the engagement was broken off. Such wicked, unscrupulous people—who in this town does not know that?' She gave Mama a severe look. 'You should confide in your friends and neighbours,' she went on steadily, recouping all the ground she had lost through the Syal débâcle. 'We are here to give you help and advice, after all.'
'But I was so happy to find someone for my Uma—after all, her cousin Anamika is already married. I didn't like to wait longer,' Mama sniffed pathetically.
'Yes, that is why the Goyals are able to do such things, because of parents being in too much of a hurry. If parents will not take the time to make proper enquiries, what terrible fates their daughters may have! Be grateful that Uma was not married into a family that could have burnt her to death in order to procure another dowry!'
Leaving Mama to gasp with shock at her terrible words, she stopped chopping betel nuts and called into the garden where Uma was helping Arun balance on a bicycle too big for him, 'Uma, Uma dear, come and sit by your Aunty. You haven't talked to me at all yet. Tell me what you are doing now, dear. Will you come shopping with me for some knitting wool tomorrow?'
Uma, confused by such unexpected attention, stood where she was, not wanting to go near Mama or hear more about the disaster. She pretended Arun's foot was caught in the pedal, and bent over him with solicitude. Mama, who was not in the least fooled, shouted across the row of flowerpots, 'Uma, answer Aunty! She is asking you, don't you hear?'
Eight
MAMA gives a start so that the swing jerks under her. 'Aré! Aré!' she screams. 'Uma, look, they are stealing the guavas again. Uma, Uma!'
Uma, indoors, frowns. 'What is it, Mama? I am sleeping, you know.'
'Why are you sleeping? There are thieves in the garden, stealing guavas. Aré!' she screams at the top of her voice.
'Let them steal,' Uma groans, throwing herself about on the bed. The sheets are damp with her perspiration and she feels stifled by them. Eventually she struggles up and goes out to meet the glare on the veranda, blinking. 'Where? Who?'
'There! There! See, they are running away—their hands full of guavas. Where is mali? Call mali. Tell him to guard the garden.'
'He must be asleep, Mama,' Uma says mildly, scratching her head and yawning.
'Everybody is sleeping. Only I stay awake to see what is happening in this house. Thieves attack us—everyone comes and takes what they like because you are all sleeping.'
'It is so hot, Mama,' Uma protests, and trails listlessly back to her bed where she sits on the edge, yawning, plaiting her hair and listening to Mama grumbling outside.
***
THERE were so many marriage proposals for Aruna that Uma's unmarried state was not only an embarrassment but an obstruction. Here was Aruna v
isibly ripening on the branch, asking to be plucked: no one had to teach her how to make samosas or help her to dress for an occasion. Instinctively, she knew. The pale, pale pink sari, the slender chain of seed pearls, the fresh flowers, the demure downcast turn of the eyes, the little foot in the red slipper thrusting out suddenly like a tongue, and the laughter low and sly. Mama watched and wondered, Papa humphed and hawed and scowled but Uma could see it was a façade and concealed a pleasure he would not allow himself to express. Sometimes there was something in his look that he did not quite control and gave him away, and that upset Mama and made her speak sharply and severely. Then he looked a bit confused, and withdrew. Uma did not know what was expected of her in this situation; she waited patiently to be disposed.
When Aruna said to her, laughing, 'Uma, why don't you cut your hair short? Like Lila Aunty? It will suit you, you know,' she retorted 'Tchh! What silly ideas you have,' and was not only annoyed but hurt as well: she had caught the mockery in Aruna's tone. When they were younger, and Uma had brought back those report cards from school filled with red Fs, Aruna had watched in silence while Papa thundered and Mama complained, and waited for a decent interval before proffering her own report card, satisfyingly blue and green, and collected their praise. When the first two attempts at marrying Uma off had ended in disgrace, she had listened to Mama's storms of temper, saying, 'I told you he was no good, didn't I?' and looked sympathetically at Uma. But now a certain mockery was creeping into her behaviour, a kind of goading, like that a sprightly little dog will subject a large dull ox to when it wants a little action. Uma's ears were already filled to saturation with Mama's laments, and Aruna's little yelps of laughter were additional barbs. Had anyone looked, they might have noticed that Uma's face was losing its childish openness of expression and taking on a look of continual care. Arun, who did not really understand what was happening, and was no part of it, seemed to sense this change: he stopped teasing her so much, appealed to her more as an adult now, then became impatient because she could not help him with his multiplication and division exercises, or throw a ball so he might practise his batting. She missed his teasing, and she missed Aruna's sympathy and solidarity too. The tightly knit fabric of family that had seemed so stifling and confining now revealed holes and gaps that were frightening—perhaps the fabric would not hold, perhaps it would not protect after all. There was cousin Anamika's example, the one no one wanted to see: but how could one not?
