Monsoon Diary Page 8

  “It’s an omen,” said Mom, bursting into tears. “It’s a sign that says we should not proceed.”

  “It’s a sign that says we shouldn’t hire deaf painters and instruct them over the phone,” said Dad.

  Old Chu was appalled when Dad, the English professor, explained the meaning of blight. Of course, he would repaint the sign, Chu said, stuttering in embarrassment. He was sorry for the mistake. “Madam was not to cly.” He would fix things.

  IN SPITE OF its rather inauspicious beginning, Bright Tutorial Academy took off. To our surprise, there were enough women who were interested in apprenticing themselves under my mother. The baking and juice-making classes were the most popular of all.

  Every week my mother bought bushels of fruits, wholesale, and taught the women how to preserve and bottle them as juices. Before long, our fridge was lined with bottles of multicolored juices: green sarsaparilla, pink guava, apple and orange, blood red tomato, yellow pineapple, ruby red grape, and golden mango nectar. I consumed them by the gallon every day in spite of my mother’s admonitions that too much fruit juice and cake would result in acne.

  One day a municipal official walked into our house. “You have put up this signboard in front of your house. So you have to pay municipal taxes at double the rate, because you are using the house as commercial, and not residential, premises.” The next morning my father removed the signboard and closed the Academy.

  MOM WAS RIGHT about drinking too much fruit juice and about the cake. When I turned thirteen, one of the first things that happened was a pimple the size of a small hill—or so it seemed to me—on the left side of my face. It was followed by another and another, until my whole face was covered with angry red eruptions. For the first time, Shyam took great interest in my face, examining the sizes and shapes of various pimples and discovering patterns.

  My budding interest in recipes and cooking was completely channeled into concocting decoctions to cure my pimples. I starting with a foul-tasting mixture of equal parts brewer’s yeast, wheat germ, and molasses, which I blended with milk and drank while holding my breath. The fiber helped my intestines but did nothing for my skin. Someone told me that prune juice helped clear the skin, so I bugged my mother to invent a palatable prune-juice recipe. She did but it had little effect. I applied gallons of turmeric. My face turned yellow, but the pimples persisted. After six months I went to a dermatologist. He prodded my face, twisted my neck, and slapped my chin.

  “You have to give up eating sweets, chocolate, candy, fried stuff, oily stuff, fats, dairy products, and spicy stuff,” he said gravely.

  “Doctor,” I replied, equally grave. “I am a growing girl. It seems like the only thing you have left in my diet is grass.”

  AT AROUND THE SAME TIME, I became interested in the opposite sex. I had grown up around boys and tended to take them for granted. Both on my maternal and paternal sides my male cousins outnumbered the females. So was the case with my neighbors. I was used to fighting with boys using a cane or cricket ball, giving as good as I got when they taunted me with grasshoppers, climbing higher than they did to pluck the juiciest mango just to prove that I could, punching them in the face when they stole my diary and read passages out loud, and competing with them at sports or swimming just to feel included. Viewing them as objects of desire was a completely new emotion for me, one that I wasn’t sure what to do with.

  Dating wasn’t widespread in Madras in the eighties. I needed another method to get close to the dozen or so boys who gathered outside our home every evening. They came from all parts of Adyar and were bound by a consuming interest in cricket and little interest in me. Since ours was a quiet street, they played right on the road’s intersection, pausing when a car passed by. The game always ended with a measuring tape. Two boys would stand on either side of a boundary line and argue for hours about whether the ball was a “four” or a “six.” Since the boundaries were drawn on the sand, there was never any agreement about whether the ball had crossed a certain line or not. Names were called, threats exchanged, and the tape was produced to measure the distance from the stumps to the boundary.

  I was a peripheral member of this coterie, much to the dismay of my brother, who frequently and vociferously complained that “Shoba didn’t behave like a girl.” The game itself didn’t captivate me as much as the fervor it evoked in the boys. My brother was wrong. I was behaving like a girl. As a freshly minted teenager, I was experiencing one of the most feminine of all emotions, even though I didn’t realize it. I was jealous of cricket because it took the attention of the boys away from me.

  After days of arguing about how unfair it was that I, a competent cricket player, could not participate in their games simply because I was a girl, after days of bribing the boys with chocolates coupled with abject pleading, I was finally allowed to be a batsman for a day.

  So there I stood, clutching my bat, facing my childhood nemesis, a precocious kid by the name of Vikas (now an I.T. professional in New Jersey). Vikas bowled a “googly.” I lofted the ball. Crash. Silence. Nobody moved.

  Mr. Gadgil, a stern moustachioed military man, leopard-walked out of his home and bellowed, “Which of you chimps threw the ball on my glass window?”

  No one said a word.

  “Haven’t I told you idiots a million times not to play outside my house?” Mr. Gadgil continued. “If I catch you playing here one more time . . . As for the ball, you can kiss it good-bye. I am not going to give it back until you pay for my damaged window.”

  With one shot, I had become the neighborhood scourge, the killer of cricket games, the lousy batsman who ousted us from our makeshift cricket ground by stirring the tiger in Mr. Gadgil.

  There were more games, of course. After all, Mr. Gadgil’s window had been broken before. The boys whined, the fathers relented and paid off Mr. Gadgil, and the game resumed, but without me.

  PERHAPS AS A WAY to distract me from my obsession with my pimples, or to solve the problem herself, my mother enrolled in the local community college and studied cosmetology. Three months later she was a certified aesthetician, and I was a willing guinea pig on whom she could practice. She waxed my legs, threaded my eyebrows, removed blackheads, gave me facials, and formulated face packs. At age thirteen, thanks to my mother’s interest in practicing her craft, I was being indulged with “Days of Beauty” that remain far superior to any that I have experienced since.

  Six months after she graduated, with typical confidence, Mom opened a beauty parlor in the room upstairs. As usual, my dad offered his quiet support in many ways: one afternoon he went upstairs and cleaned out the dusty old books, odd items of furniture, and the random coconuts that had been stored in the room. Together my parents ordered some equipment: a massage table, several mirrors, chairs, a facial steamer, a hair dryer, and a medicine cabinet for storing bottles of lotion. Old Chu painted another signboard and this time he spelled it correctly. Within months, Mom had closed down one business and opened another. We named her beauty parlor Kadambari, a Sanskrit word that meant “sweet-smelling.” Not that her parlor smelled sweet, but we just liked the sound of it. Kadambari Beauty Parlor officially opened for business on my fourteenth birthday. It was, in a sense, my mother’s birthday present to me.

  All our friends came to Mom’s beauty parlor, first out of curiosity and then attracted by her compelling personality and comforting hands that massaged each customer’s skin till it bloomed. I would go up on weekends and listen to the women talk, laugh, and exchange confidences as women do when they are together, about secret trysts, broken promises, and dreams of eternal youth.

  Mom had been a beautician long before she became certified as one. She loved makeup and jewelry and gave tips to everyone in her acquaintance about lipstick colors and costume jewelry. From my point of view, however, the best part of Mom’s expertise was her popularity on the bridal circuit.

  Every time someone in our community got married, the bride’s parents would come and beseech Mom to do the “br
idal makeup.” After a few self-deprecating noises that failed to mask her pleasure, Mom would agree.

  Once, a local politician’s daughter was getting married, a lavish affair that got reported in the society pages for months on end. The size of the hall, the guest list, which included every bigwig in town, the diamond jewelry, the flowers, the caterers—all were fodder for gossip. The bride’s mother was an acquaintance of my mom’s and insisted that Mom do the makeup.

  On the afternoon of the wedding reception, a gleaming limousine arrived. Mom and I set off grandly, armed with makeup cases, yards of flowers, boxes of costume jewelry, and reams of ribbons, hairpins, and accessories. The bride’s parents received us as if we were dignitaries, anxiously asking if we had everything we needed and pressing tea, coffee, and snacks on us, all of which my mom waved away before I could say a word of assent. Instead, she sailed in like a general and took charge completely, sending various lackeys scurrying in search of the freshest flowers, silk threads, and sandals of a particular shade.

  The bride’s parents led us deferentially into an air-conditioned room, where the bride was ensconced. After some pleasantries, my mother seated the bride in front of a mirror and surveyed her as if she were a blank canvas. The whole entourage watched with bated breath. “Hmm,” Mom said thoughtfully. “I think violet, don’t you?”

  Everyone nodded. A few deliberations later, my mom shooed the entire crowd out of the room and began her operation. Together, we cleared some space and spread our wares—hair clips of various sizes, safety pins, bangles, hair spray, and makeup. Since the bride was the center of attraction, being close to her made me feel powerful. Occasionally, I wandered out of the room and asked for snacks or soda with a snap of my fingers, thrilled at the speed with which it was delivered.

  An hour later my mom teased and twirled the bride’s hair into an elaborate coif and sprayed it into place. I inhaled deeply, reveling in the potent smell of hair spray, perfume, and flowers. I nestled amidst the rustling silks, surrounded by eyeshadows, lipsticks, and blush in a rainbow of colors. The soft murmur of the air conditioner soothed me and cooled my cream soda. I felt like a princess.

  After she had painted the bride’s face, put up her hair, and sprayed errant strands into submission; after she had helped the girl get into her bridal attire and carefully tacked various pieces of jewelry on her, Mom surveyed and approved her work. Only then did my mother order a thandai. Three of them, actually: one for her, one for the bride, and one for me. It was the only thing she drank when she was on duty, for it was refreshing and nutritional, a “picker-upper,” as she said.

  THANDAI

  I was sixteen. It was Holi—the festival of colors. The streets of Delhi were awash in light, a riot of colors. Teenage boys and girls ran around in laughing groups, throwing colored powder at one another, shouting, “Holi Hai!” I was at a mela (carnival). Strapping lads stripped to the waist and gulped down glasses of thandai. They sang and danced to the pulsating drums, their cheeks streaked with purple and pink, their hair colored red, blue, and green. Ferris wheels and carousels spun. Across the crowd, I saw him: tall, tanned, and muscular with eyes the color of blackberries. I was entranced. He poured a glass of thandai down his throat and slowly made his way toward me. A kiss and he was gone. Was it me or was it the thandai?

  Thandai fortified by bhaang, a local intoxicant made from the cannabis plant, is a favorite drink during the Holi harvest festival. Bhaang seeds are similar to coriander seeds. They are powdered and added to the recipe below to give it an intoxicating kick that lasts hours. This is a benign but delicious version.

  SERVES 4

  1 tablespoon almonds

  1/2 teaspoon poppy seeds

  1/2 tablespoon anise seeds

  1/2 teaspoon cardamom powder or 15 whole pods

  1 teaspoon whole peppercorns

  1/4 cup dried or fresh rose petals (available as gulkand in Indian grocery stores)

  1 1/2 cups sugar

  1 cup milk

  1/2 teaspoon rose water (optional)

  Soak the almonds, poppy seeds, anise seeds, cardamom (if using cardamom powder, mix it in later, with the milk), peppercorns, and rose petals in 2 cups of water for 2 hours. Drain, then grind all the soaked ingredients into a very smooth paste in a blender. Add 4 cups of water and blend well. Strain through a fine sieve or muslin. Add the sugar, milk, and rose water to the extracted liquid. Mix well. Chill for an hour or two before serving.

  EIGHT

  Vaikom House

  IN APRIL, the “fire star” arrived in Madras, auguring days and nights of unrelenting tropical heat and humidity. Schools closed for their annual summer vacation, enabling city dwellers to flee to cooler climes. Those that could afford it took retreat in the hills; others went to their farms or beach houses, and the rest parked themselves on unsuspecting relatives.

  My family and I summered in Kerala. Kerala State extends like a finger along the South Indian coast. It is a land of pristine white beaches, rough gray seas, and swaying coconut palms (Kerala means “Land of the Coconut”). Lush tropical trees fairly burst with nature’s bounty—ripe mangoes all year round, bananas, jackfruit, tapioca, cashews, cloves, cardamom, and of course, the ubiquitous coconuts.

  My father was born in Kerala, and several of my uncles and aunts still live there. They are a large family—six brothers and three sisters, spread out all over India, knit closely by a love of their native land.

  I am from Kerala, which means that regardless of where I live at any other point in my life, I will love coconuts in any form, I will habitually douse my hair with warm coconut oil and wash it off with ground herbs during a weekly “oil bath,” I will be enchanted by the sight of large expanses of water, and the smell of the rain will transport me back to my childhood.

  We took the train to Ernakulam or Kottayam, then hired a taxi to take us to Vaikom, our ancestral village on the banks of sprawling Vembanad Lake. Vaikom didn’t have the kisses and caresses of the Indian Ocean to soothe and calm its people. Yet with its three religious groups—Christians, Muslims, and Hindus—coexisting in sporadic harmony over the years, it produced a handsome, distinctive race of people.

  The women had long, curly black hair, and the salubrious soil and water endowed them with golden skin. Their flashing eyes, flaring skirts, tight blouses exposing bare midriffs, and swaying, sensual walk would all seem openly erotic were they not so casually displayed.

  The men were hirsute and stocky, with eyes that were permanently hooded from the potent kallu liquor that they imbibed in large quantities. They sported a certain machismo, with bare torsos and broad moustaches displayed like badges of honor. A Kerala man would be lost without his moustache, or his mundu, which every man in the state wears like a uniform.

  The mundu is a remarkably versatile garment, considering that it is but two meters of white cotton cloth, sans tailoring or texture. Kerala politicians wear sarong-style starched white mundus that fairly crackle with every step. Men working on the farm or going to the temple wear the mundu without a matching shirt, simply draping the towel like a shawl around their upper body. When involved in menial jobs like shelling coconuts by the hundreds, they tie the upper cloth into a turban to rid themselves of its constraining embrace. During summer months the stifling length of the mundu is cut in half by lifting it off the ground and doubling it around itself to resemble a pair of shorts. This works equally well when men have to wade through the knee-deep water that is the blessing and the bane of the southwest monsoon.

  Although it’s a small state, Kerala has the highest literacy rate in all of India. It is the only one of two Indian states that sporadically supports a Marxist government—the source of equal parts affection and denouncement. Kerala men will stand on culverts and street corners chewing tobacco and arguing for hours about Marxism. Every so often, like the coming of a cyclone, they will take up their knives to settle a quarrel.

  The volatile tempers and simmering passions of Vaikom were good busi
ness for my grandfather, a criminal lawyer, and a superb one at that. The entire village called him Swami, which meant God. My grandmother was referred to in a less grandiose fashion as Subbe-Akka, which meant “elder sister.” Legend had it that men in drunken brawls would yell that they had Swami on their side—“Ennikku enda Swami undadoi ”—before sinking a knife into another man’s throat.

  My grandparents were an odd couple. My grandfather was a tall, imposing man, with penetrating eyes and a sharp nose. He was fair for an Indian, to the point where people sometimes mistook him for an English sahib. A stern disciplinarian who followed an unwavering routine all his life, he rarely smiled, and spoke only when it was necessary.

  My grandmother, on the other hand, was short, gentle, and garrulous. She had the cheerful fatalism of someone who had given up trying to control her world. She was always busy, fussing over people, feeding them, taking in strays, hovering over projects that never seemed to get done, and holding multiple conversations, all at the same time. Her activities intensified in the summer, when the entire clan descended on her.

  It began, as always, with a feast. Several feasts in fact.

  The coming of the summer heralded many things in my paternal grandparents’ life: the arrival of the colonel, the grandchildren, the southwest monsoon, weddings, betrothals, and births too numerous to count, and to celebrate all these, a series of sadyas, or feasts.

  It wasn’t that my grandmother, Shoba Lakshmi, after whom I was named, planned on throwing multiple feasts. Indeed, she lived in mortal fear of her thrifty sisters-in-law, who clicked their tongues and said that she ran the house as if it were a railway station, with constant comings and goings, and food being spread around like coconut water. “You need to tighten your sari, my dear, and exert iron control over the household,” her sisters-in-law chided as they chewed on betel leaves after dinner. “You can’t dance to the tune of every visitor that passes through this house.”