Turmeric and Tamarind

TURMERIC

AND

TAMARIND

NALINI RAMESH

Copyright © 2017 by Nalini Ramesh.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2017946390

ISBN:                  Hardcover                  978-1-5437-4219-0

                            Softcover                    978-1-5437-4218-3

                            eBook                          978-1-5437-4220-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

Contents

Acknowledgements

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Resources and References

Glossary of Colloquial Tamil Words Used in This Book

Acknowledgements

T urmeric and Tamarind was written during the long nights of waiting that span an obstetrician’s career.

I thank my elders, Mrs Gomathy and Drs Kasturi and Sundar, who have always encouraged me in all that I have done. I am indebted to my best critics, Dr Ramesh and Dr Hemanth. Ramesh, you pulled me back into reality when I stayed too long in my dreams. Hemanth, you made me believe that anything is possible.

I owe much to my spiritual guide and friend, the Venerable Tenzin Tharpa.

Thank you, dear cousins Sandhya Raman and Raji Lakshminarayan, for sharing my childhood.

Most of all, my thanks to the wonderful people at Partridge Singapore – especially Mr Jerome Edwards and Ms Emily Laurel, who gave me hope and patiently heard me out. Thank you for providing guidance to first-time authors.

—Nalini Ramesh

To

Nandini Doreswamy

and

Shamanthaka Subramanian

for their support and belief.

1

S hiva stared at the approaching Bombay docks from the deck of the Orient . The words Burning, burning… hammered ceaselessly at the back of his turbulent mind. The burning was done, and he had collected all that was left of her from the pyre. The cloth-bound porcelain urn was damp with sweat where he had held it close to his chest. On this clear, humid morning, his mother Mamathi was reaching the end of her last journey home.

He had sent a terse telegram to Uncle Pichu, her brother: Coming to Bombay April 2. Today the old man would be at the edge of the landing platform once again, waiting in the same place where Mamathi had said her goodbyes a year before.

As the Orient docked, he could see Uncle Pichu’s tall, thin frame silhouetted against the white-washed naval buildings. As Shiva walked down the gangplank, more detail came into view. His uncle bore all the hallmarks of a government servant – a clerk in His Majesty’s service. Pichu’s short peppered hair blew back from a sagging, oval face; his sharp eyes, under unkempt brows, looked straight ahead as always. Three finger widths of sweat-congealed holy ash smeared across the forehead proclaimed a priestly caste.

The old man was tucking a white veshti between his knees and adjusting a frayed black coat over a sparkling full-sleeved white shirt. Pichu extracted a walking stick from under his arm, held it steady on the ground, and squatted behind it, both hands atop its knob.

On firm ground, Shiva contemplated the frail form squatting near the short white stakes marking the dock’s end. A sparse crowd of daily spectators were scattered around. Pichu’s crouched figure, with his coat touching the ground, looked incongruous. Like a shepherd in Chennali. Shiva’s troubled mind sought relief from disquiet with irrelevance. Carrying a small tin trunk in his other hand now, he strode the fifty yards between them. Tall, fair, with reddish hair and a trained bearing, he did look like an English officer. He sensed Pichu’s appreciative glance, but that look turned anxious and questioning as his uncle rose to greet him.

Putting down the trunk and placing the urn on it, he bent to touch the elder’s feet in customary greeting.

Holding Pichu’s arm, he looked into the uncomprehending crow-black eyes. In spite of a month of rehearsals, he could not control the speed and sequence of his words. "She passed away. This is for her antyesti."

The walking stick dropped. Pichu sank to the ground, burying his face in his palms. He began to cry uncontrollably, the old frame shaking with each sob.

Not here! Uncle! Not here! Shiva whispered, glancing with embarrassment at the other visitors around them. He helped the old man up and hugged him, feeling the thin arms tightly encircling him in return. After disengaging himself and picking up his possessions, he followed his tearful uncle to the waiting horse-drawn tonga at the far end of the quay.

Later, in his uncle’s dusty bachelor room, the old man said, "There is no use in asking why or asking how. She has gone with a cremation even if it was not on our sacred land! You are her son, and you have lit her pyre. Her soul will attain moksha."

Uncle Pichu did not speak much after that. Either his uncle did not know or was acting out the lie very well indeed. Shiva decided to wait. There would be time in Chennali to open old wounds.

The next day, they travelled south on a train that heaved with people between each station until they reached Amparai. It was the last stop before changing trains and proceeding to Chennali, on the banks of the river Dharani. The ashes would be immersed in the river of their ancestors, and Mamathi would finally become one with the waters in the land of her birth.

Do you visit often? Shiva asked as they sat in their crowded third-class compartment.

Not since you both left, Pichu replied. The old man smiled for the first time since Shiva’s arrival. Holding the urn and stroking it gently, he murmured, Mamathi, we will see our river together.

Shiva felt nauseated as he sat in the hot, crowded compartment. The coach was divided into cubicles which opened into a corridor on one flank. Each cubicle had thick sheets of wood attached along its length, which served as long common seats; two such planks faced each other. Rough slats, fixed above, formed a hold for luggage.

Shiva withdrew into his grief torn heart and inwardly shrank away from the old man. Uncle Pichu did not seem to mind the smell of sweat and garlic at all. It would be four days of sitting, itching, and relieving oneself in the bushes by the tracks – the last act carefully planned to suit the train’s stops. He ate green plantains and drank sweet milky tea from little earthen pots bought at stations along the way

As the train started again from yet another dusty station, Pichu seemed lost in thought, with a small smile playing on his lips, as if he were in a distant, happy past.

2

T he nineteenth century was moulting into the next, and the Empire clung tenaciously to the subcontinent. The British octopus had wound its engulfing grip over the sweaty peninsula. In the south, the presidency of Madras was the seat of foreign power. However, further south, almost at lands’ end where the river Dharani reigned, the creature had dried and shrunk. The octopus was weak at her tentacles’ tips.

Every summer, it was as if this river had never flowed, and its culmination at the majestic Kondadharai Falls was just a memory. On its sandy banks, the hamlets of Chennali and Huliyuru leaned on the browned forest that separated them, desiccated by the heat. The villagers always waited out the dry days patiently. The monsoon sky never failed them. The heavy grey clouds would arrive. The wells would fill and temple courtyards would green. The whispering wind would return to the laden trees.

The forest abutting the Dharani was forbidding. Even the angry midsummer sun could sneak in only a few rays. Fed by deep springs, the core of this woodland stayed wet. Quicksand hid beneath the decaying undergrowth, challenging those who dared it. The plentiful canopy teemed with feathery life. Shrub-covered hills and low mountains, punctuated with dark caverns, rose above the trees. These dim caves were believed to host all manner of spirits, ghosts, and malevolent ethers. Only the gypsies ventured here, to invoke the phantasms that hovered over their spells.

A single cart track cut through the woodland gloom lying between the two villages. It struggled to keep itself straight, fighting creeping roots and the ubiquitous thick-leaved grass. Travellers, even those with the best bullock carts, hurried to complete the journey in the daylight hours. They were wary of the slippery slush, the robbers, the ghosts, and the fearless, nimble monkeys swinging among the rootlets above.

Huliyuru lay downstream from Chennali, on these lands. Subramanyam Iyer was the priest at Chennali’s famed temple. Here Lord Shiva took the form of Nataraja, the celestial dancer. Subramanyam Iyer commented often, with a superior air, that the Huliyuru folks existed on their used wash-water. Whatever the water, prosperity was an equalizer, and the fields of Narayana Murthy in Huliyuru were just as bountiful.

Murthy’s family home was built from the local grey stone and dark timber. Three generations had seen it spread and enfold all in a rhapsody of green and plenty on the riverbank. Padmavathy’s step over the threshold furthered fortunes. Narayana Murthy called her ardhangini (meaning my half). A few others, including some childless widowed relatives, sheltered here permanently, helping the prosperous couple orchestrate order into their rambling abode.

Today Narayana Murthy was smiling, swinging his teak walking stick with one hand, the other on his elder son’s shoulder. Bhaskaran, known also as Buddhi, was detailing the day’s harvest. The fourteen-year-old sober heir had already taken his father’s side in the fields. They were now returning home at sunset, re-knotting the tufts at the backs of their otherwise closely cropped heads. The workers had been particularly quick and one of them, having recently become a father had sought to name the child after his master. It was the Lord’s name after all and belonged to everyone, the older man had said. All the farmhands and cowherds had bowed in respect. Kindness and grace were rare among the arrogant upper caste Brahmin landlords.

It was time for the evening meal. The duo hurried to wash their hands and feet at the enormous wooden trough standing in the corner of the front garden and join the prayer rituals. The used water nurtured the fragrant mallikai and maruthani bushes dotting the grass. Beyond the grass, yellow-flowering bushes of the thanga arali had been planted to form a hedge around the house. Children tirelessly played with the ochre buds, bursting them with pops against their foreheads. A long-squeaking wicket gate elbowed its rights into the hedge, announcing visitors as they entered and walked to the main steps of the house. At the bottom of the steps, they were welcomed by a kolam drawn with geometric artistry on the ground. Padmavathy, Murthy’s wife, ensured its daily creation with rice flour and red mud to stymie evil spirits. Servants and the lowest castes did not step over the kolam, always standing and bowing, with hands over opposite arms, in respect to their Brahmin masters. Ten steps rose to a landing – the thinnai. It was flanked by long, high-backed carved stone seats on its sides – a place to relax and gossip, and to receive guests of high, but not equal, castes.

The elders had started the evening’s prayers, and the house was warm with the fragrance of sandalwood incense and smoking sambrani resin inviting the gods to visit. Thick gravies of rasam and sambar bubbled out their contribution to the scents from the huge kitchen at the back.

Pattabhi, or Pichu, hurried in moments later. Narayana Murthy’s second-born lived up to his nickname, which meant to tear and be destructive. After splashing perfunctorily at the water trough to wet his clothes, he ran up the steps. He was supposed to wash completely before entering, having just returned from a non-Brahmin’s house. Pausing on the thinnai, which had heated under the midday sun, he jumped on it, up and down, checking the tolerance of his soles. He then entered the anteroom through the main door, made of carved wood, and slid his feet into a cool pile of freshly harvested turmeric plants. The shadows of the window bars were squiggly as they climbed on the high mounds of tamarind pulp drying alongside. He pinched off a bit of the fruit, put it in his mouth, and grimaced as the sourness hit his tongue. Skipping through an arched opening he crossed a large hall and an open courtyard before joining his family in the swamiyul, the room for the gods.

The swamiyul was the pulse of every high-caste home and housed a forest of bronze and silver idols on the steps of a wide wooden platform that rose halfway to the roof. Scents of the garden flowers, turmeric, kungumam and sandalwood suffused the sacred space. Four tall brass oil lamps, nurtured day and night, lit up the room. One huge lamp was suspended from the central rafter by a chain of thick iron links. It swung gently now. A heavy iron ladder leaned on one wall to an open attic. Its rungs offered space to dry the ritual clothes separately. Pichu wiped his fingers on one such cloth. Buddhi noticed, frowned, and then hid a smile. Mahalakshmi was the youngest. Her early childhood lisp of her name as Mamathi was how everyone knew her. With mallikai flowers in her pigtails, she stood with closed eyes, apparently in prayer. Without opening them, she sidled up next to Pichu.

The swamiyul had the kitchen next to it. Both opened into the rectangular courtyard. This central area of the house saw the full flurry of religious activity. It was open to the sky and was ruled by a tall, leafy tulasi shrub. It grew in its high clay stand, filled with earth. Holy tulasi, keeper of the home, protector against widowhood, was revered and worshiped every morning by the pious. The stand was anointed with sacred kungumam and turmeric on all sides; the plant’s leafy twigs were festooned with knotted cotton prayer threads.

Tin awnings supported by stone pillars, bordered the open area. Brass pots brimming with aromas of Padmavathi’s cooking were ferried to and fro from the kitchen to the hall, under their shelter. Meals were eaten on fresh banana leaves. Men and boys were served first, sitting on their mats of Pattamadai reeds, in the hall, on the floor. The women and the girls ate in the huge kitchen.

To the left of the kitchen, separated from it by a wide passageway, were the rooms of the younger children, which were shared by widows and visiting female relatives. The passage ended at the back door. Mamathi’s room was the last along this passage, with her window overlooking a garden that sloped to the river.

From the anteroom entrance, the view ran through the hall and open courtyard, through the passage between the rooms, into the backyard, and to the sparkling patches of river beyond. Like a railway coupe, Uncle Tapak had once said. The remark was lost on his listeners who had never seen one. Narayana Murthy told Padmavathy often that he suspected his reckless younger brother probably jostled with the lower castes in those trains, travelling up and down from Madras to Bombay.

All the Brahmin houses along the river were designed in the same way. It was the most convenient of plans for following the strict religious and social rules of the priestly caste.

The backyard was vast and sloped from the teak back door, through the hedge,