One Hundred Shades of White. Preethi Nair

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СКАЧАТЬ She came everywhere with us and was placed in whichever kitchen we were cooking in and was always given the first offering of food. There were many kitchens the little Goddess visited as word spread rapidly through the village that we had the most amazing ability to cook. As we were hired out for village festivals, births and marriages, things in the village began to change: a new temple, renewed rainfall, and laughter. It was almost as if my mother turned the inability to mend her own life outwards and seeing the pleasure this produced fixed her in some way. She took pride in her work and it showed.

      The astrologer first thought that these changes were negligible and had been induced by the new phase of the moon. When one of the village women, who had been trying for ten years to conceive, suddenly fell pregnant, he consulted his chart and once again found two new specks pointing in a northward direction. He paid us a visit.

      My mother welcomed him in. He looked around at the walls that had been brightly painted and the kitchen area decorated with freshly cut flowers and then he saw the box with my mother’s Goddess covered with garlands and whatever pieces of jewellery she had. The room was infused with cooking smells and the fragrance of jasmine and incense and then he looked down at the floor which had been neatly swept. He felt a little reassured and he removed his chappels. My mother pulled out the best stool for him and he sat.

      He was probably in his mid-thirties and had taken over from his father who had died suddenly. He found it difficult at first to speak and coughed everywhere, looking a little embarrassed, as he dabbed his cheeks with his loincloth. His bare chest had red saffron stains and a black piece of string hung diagonally along it. At the other end was a small bag where he kept a notebook, some seashells and a pendulum. My mother smiled at him and brought him some masala tea. He swiftly drank and coughed again. She pulled out some honey-coated jilebies and as she offered him one, his face softened. When that had disappeared, he took another and another, until his whole body surrendered and then he spoke.

      ‘Why did you come here?’ enquired the astrologer.

      ‘We were sent,’ my mother replied.

      ‘Dates of birth?’

      She gave him the name of the rainy season and the time at which I was born and she said that he could plot my life for she knew for sure the path hers was going to take.

      ‘Just do Nali’s,’ she said.

      He took out his notebook and began drawing and calculating. Smiling enthusiastically, he murmured the word ‘good’ half a dozen times and then he paused, long silent pauses where he shook his head, and then he began to discuss the plans that had been made for me.

      ‘Many men will come from afar to marry you and you will be a beautiful woman but you must not readily accept the first proposal and you must not marry in pursuit of love, for this, too, is an illusion, just a state of mind. You will be a very, very prosperous woman, unimaginably so, but never lose sight of your gift. If you do, you lose your centre and all else falls away. You are already very blessed, for many people must go in search of their gifts. Lifetimes are spent on this. You know where it resides, hold onto it.’ He looked up from what he was doing and asked, ‘Father dead?’

      ‘Yes, yes,’ interjected my mother hastily, ‘lost his life in a tragic accident.’

      He was about to probe further when I looked at him sadly and said ‘drowning’ and then I asked him if I would be happy.

      He responded by saying that happiness was a state of mind and nature dictates that states are forever changing. He opened his tin of moist sandalwood and placed two dots on our foreheads. Every Thursday after that he would pay a visit, have tea, share his counsel, bless us and leave.

      I did go to school when I could but it wasn’t something that interested me. What I loved was the preparation of a wedding or a village festival; the anticipation, the chopping of food, the blending, the frying, the colours, the aromas, the tasting then adding, and then the final results offered alongside decorations. My mother understood this completely and the only stipulation she gave was that I learn to read and write.

      We gained much respect for the work we produced in the village and although my mother had made enough money to buy her own plot of land, she decided not to, saving the money instead for my dowry. She hoped that the money would attract a good suitor for me.

      When I was about sixteen, many young men and their families began to come and enquire if I was eligible for marriage. First, the tree climber and his family came. His job was to collect all the different fruit from the trees but my mother looked at the state of his feet and his fingernails and turned him away. Then the doctors’ family arrived, they weren’t doctors as such but were twins. In the village, twins were supposed to have curative powers and if someone had an ailment, one of the twins was brought in to touch the patient. If this failed, the other twin was brought in and the patient was supposedly healed. My mother didn’t believe a word of it, thinking that most complaints in the village were cured by her fiery pepper rasams. She said that ailments were very simple to cure; cold diseases treated by warm spices and warm diseases treated by cold spices. In any case this was all irrelevant; the family couldn’t decide on which twin to marry me to and they began arguing amongst themselves.

      Many even waived the dowry like Luxmiammayi; she made her money by casting off the evil eye. Luxmiammayi did this by blowing ashes of holy vibuthi at those touched by the evil eye and purported to fix any number of problems by doing so. One of the farmers was preoccupied that his hens weren’t laying eggs; he was convinced that a neighbouring farmer had put a curse on him, so she looked into it and blew. A few days later the hens started laying again. There was, however, some tension between her and my mother because every time we cooked for a major occasion Luxmiammayi would sit and gossip about how salty the plantain upperie tasted or how badly cut the spinach thoran was. My mother could have said many things about her, like the fact that she didn’t use proper vibuthi and it was really leftover wood ash, but she said nothing and Luxmiammayi too was sent packing. The only good thing about the son, my mother proclaimed, was that he had shiny white teeth and this was because he had nothing better to do all day except suck twigs from the neem tree. My mother warded them all off with strong garlic which she mixed in their tea. None of them, she said, were good enough. She didn’t know that I had fallen in love with one of the Kathis’ sons.

      The Kathis had two boys, Raul and Gobi. Both were much older than me and I barely saw them when I was growing up due to the fact they both boarded at the school in the main town. Their father made sure they went to college and got respectable jobs. Gobi, the younger of the two, visited town often on leave and I had seen him a few times but never spoken with him. One day, I was delivering trays and pots to his home, balancing one on my head and carrying the others. He startled me, coming from nowhere, and asked if I was going to his house and if I needed help. ‘No,’ I replied, meaning I didn’t want any help.

      It took me half an hour to cross the fields, the sun that day was painfully hot, and I arrived at their kitchen door, sweating. The maid started shouting at me, saying that Thampurati was getting impatient with her and it was my fault. She went on and on and all I could think of was how hot and thirsty I was and I needed a glass of water. She was furious and continued banging pots and pans so that the noise brought down several members of the household.

      Gobi walked past the kitchen and stopped when he saw me. ‘You said you weren’t coming here.’

      ‘I was, but,’ I hesitated, desperate for some water.

      ‘But,’ he continued.

      ‘I need some …’ I fainted.

      I remember waking up in the most luxurious room. Cool, tiled floors, beautiful alcove ceilings, and the noise СКАЧАТЬ