One Part Woman (18 page)

The play had just begun, and there wasn’t much of a crowd yet. They would start coming in now. But considering there was so much going on in all the streets, this was an impressive crowd, the kind of crowd that sits down and watches something. The clown was singing the welcome song:

Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!

Come, sit down, sit down, sit down!

He came around on all sides and exhorted everyone to ‘Sit down, sit down.’ But it looked like many people had planned to watch for a while and then move on. So, very few people obliged the clown.

Then he dragged on, ‘Appanmaare! Annanmaare! Fathers! Brothers!’ But the harmonium player stopped playing, looked at the clown and said, ‘You babbling idiot! Can’t you speak sensibly? Since when do appan and annan have breasts?’ He was clearly punning on the word ‘maar’ that the clown had
used simply as a plural suffix, but which also referred to breasts. Everyone laughed.

But the clown was up to the repartee. He said, ‘Ah, the times have come to this! You are good at playing the box, but you can’t speak a word properly. And you call me a babbler? You are a babbler, you father’s a babbler, your mother and wife are babblers. Also, don’t you frequent a woman in the prostitute quarters? She’s a babbler, too!’ The crowd laughed at his layered attack.

The harmonium player beat a retreat, saying, ‘Good lord! You are the god of words. You definitely speak meaningfully.’

‘All right, I will sing sensibly as you asked me. Listen,’ said the clown.

Older sisters, younger sisters,

Mothers and grandmothers,

Redden your tongue

With betel leaves and nuts

And come, sit down, sit down!

But he continued to use ‘maar’ as the plural form, enunciating it extra clearly, and emphasized the double entendre by heaving his chest up and down as he finished the song.

Ponna walked past the people sitting on the mats that were normally used as partitions. She wanted to sit right in the front. As she waded through the crowd, light from the flame torches suddenly illuminated her. She tightened
her sari around her torso and continued walking, when the clown pointed at her and said: ‘Aha! Look who has come! Kumari Rukmini amma herself, who played the role of Valli, Lord Murugan’s consort from the movie
Sri Valli
has come from Chennapattanam to watch our play! What style! What beauty! How glamorously has she tied her sari! What gait! What a dancer! O peacock, won’t you be my messenger … Everyone! Please put your hands together and give her a place to sit.’

Everyone looked at Ponna, clapped and laughed. Then the clown started singing a famous song from the movie
Sri Valli
: ‘In the forest that never dries up …’ Everyone’s attention was fully on Ponna. When she realized it was her that the clown had referred to as the actress Kumari Rukmini, she was overcome with shyness. She dropped her chin and quickly sat down where she could find a spot.

Kali had taken her to watch some movies. The movie
Sri Valli
had run at Sri Krishna Talkies for several days. All the village folk arranged bullock carts and went in large groups to watch it. ‘Oh, it is the story of our Pazhani Murugan,’ was what everyone kept saying.

Her mother-in-law, however, was not pleased with the idea. She went on and on: ‘I have never seen a farmer who went to the Chakkili part of town in the middle of the night to watch a play. And what I cannot believe is that this girl too wants to go along! As if that wasn’t enough, now they are showing a film, it seems, and these two are going for that!’

Kali said, ‘Amma, shut up. This is a movie about our god Pazhani Murugan. Everyone’s going. You come too, if you want.’

‘Of course!’ she snapped sarcastically. ‘Am I at an age to go and see people dropping their clothes and prancing around? You two get lost.’

Kali and Ponna went to watch the movie. They walked along with a crowd that looked as big as the one that went every year on Panguni Utthiram carrying kavadis to Pazhani. Ponna did not understand the film much, so Kali kept explaining it to her now and then. He was used to coming with his friends to watch films at night. But Ponna had only seen three or four films, so she had difficulty understanding certain things. She could not make sense of the lyrics. She felt sleepy after a while. But, despite all these constraints, they managed to watch
Sri Valli
. She thought that the actress Rukmini who played Valli was extremely beautiful. Her unblemished face had stayed in Ponna’s mind. She even touched her cheek, wondering if she would ever be as beautiful as Rukmini. Perhaps if she wore a blouse and jewellery like she did. As she wondered how she’d look with a blouse on, she pulled her sari to cover her chest properly.

She felt bad that the clown had made her the butt of ridicule. But then she took comfort in the fact that no one was looking at her any more. It was only after she sat down that she realized she had walked and run a long distance. Her legs begged for some rest.

In the Chakkili quarters of the village, there was always a
play when there was a temple festival. In the month of Thai, there was another ceremony, and they had performed plays then too. But it happened in the cemetery, so the upper castes did not go for that. For the one that happened during the temple festival, the Chakkili people kept a separate spot for the Gounders to watch the play from. Ponna had seen many such performances. The clown could make even the most morose of people laugh. Hoping that she would find some solace if she let her mind enter the play, she started paying attention.

A man, who was not in costume, came to announce what the play was about in a pompous speech: ‘The fact of the matter is, the fourteenth day of the festival is going on with aplomb in Tiruchengode, which is such a heaven on earth and is so fertile with gold, dairy and paddy that the crores of celestial beings and even the three gods—Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva—along with their consorts are considering staying on here! The god and goddess of the hill—who are variously called Ardhanareeswaran, the half-female god, Maadhorubaagan, the one who is one part woman, and Ammaiyappan, the mother–father god—came down from the hill, went around the four main streets in procession, blessed various villages with their presence, and today they are about to go back to the hill …’

The clown had to rupture all this bombast! He said, ‘This man says the god and goddess roamed around the villages. But are they jobless like you? Wherever they roam about, they have to come back here eventually. That’s why we have
this fourteenth day of the festival. All right, what was it you said about Ammaithazhumbu, the chickenpox scar?’

The announcer was ready to handle this pun on words. ‘Not Ammaithazhumbu, pa. I said Ammaiyappan, the mother–father form.’

The clown, who was on a roll by now, replied, ‘Oh, you mean your mother and your father? Okay. Didn’t you say something else? Something about Madhiyaanasoru, the afternoon meal? You were mentioning that you and I didn’t eat lunch, weren’t you?

The announcer was exasperated: ‘Ayyo! Not that, pa.’

The clown now pretended to take offence to his being addressed as ‘pa’, which was both a respectful, endearing way to address someone as well as a short form for ‘appa’. ‘Stop! Why do you keep addressing me as “pa”? How did I become you father? I don’t even know who your mother is. Are you trying to grab a share of my wealth?’

Announcer: ‘Well, what wealth do you have, pa?’

Clown: ‘See! You are calling me “pa” again!’

The announcer had had it. He switched to the much less respectful ‘da’, and said, ‘All right, you useless motherfucker. Tell me how much wealth you got.’

‘Good, now that’s a more respectable way to address me. I have five acres next to the river and seven acres next to the lake. But I’m not going to give them to anyone. Even when I die, they will remain in my name. Now you come back to the matter at hand. What were you saying about Madhiyaanasoru, our lunch?’ said the clown.

‘No one wants your land. Keep it, da. I was not talking about Madhiyaanasoru but about Maadhorubaagan, the one who is one part female. The god who stands on the Tiruchengode hill and has the goddess for his left half. That is why he is called Maadhorubaagan. Do you understand, da?’

The clown switched to mock anger now, and said, ‘Hey! What is this? You are using the “da” too often now!’ Then he lamented his bad fate: ‘Why should I have to struggle with this disrespectful man! All right. So, Madhiyaanasoru means to be half male and half female? So they stay right next to each other? But what’s the use if they can’t touch each other?’

The announcer was now disgusted at these sacrilegious remarks. ‘Chee!’ he said. ‘Don’t say such dirty things on this auspicious day. You will land up in hell for the next seven births.’

‘Oh! So you think you will go to the glorious heaven?’ retorted the clown. ‘When you die, no one will even volunteer to decorate your hearse. People come only when you have amassed some wealth. You have nothing.’

Then he turned to the audience, and continued, ‘In the morning, you will see him buying some puttu on credit from the poor woman.’

Back to addressing the announcer, the clown said, ‘What uncouth thing did I say? I said the male and female sides cannot touch each other despite being so close. What’s wrong with that? You and I came about because they touched, isn’t it? You call this dirty?’

Either out of sheer exasperation or because the play had to begin at some point, the announcer broke into an invocation song seeking the blessings of Ganapathi before beginning the play based on the well-known story of Siruthondan, a devotee of Lord Shiva.

‘The play that we are going to present today is the story of the King of Kanchi—the most fertile and prosperous of kingdoms. He did great service to the devotees of our Lord by offering them food every day. One day, the Lord tested him by asking the King to give him his own son, the prince. And the King did. The Lord then brought the King’s dear son back to life. If those without children are watching this play, they will be blessed with a child …’

Here the clown cut in and took over, ‘Those without husbands will be blessed with husbands and those who do not have wives will be blessed with wives. Isn’t that so?’

The crowd doubled up in laughter. No one had left the audience. In fact, some more people had joined in. Ponna felt that the clown was the strength of this troupe. He was definitely going to hold the audience’s attention till the end. But she did not like the fact that they were playing Siruthondar’s story. She had seen it once at the Chakkiliyar’s festival. Since someone had prayed for a child and got one, they had arranged for the play to be performed. And several people from the Chakkili quarters came one after the other to invite Ponna. When the moment came in the play wherein the prince Seeralan is killed for food, there was not a dry eye in the audience.

Ponna remembered how heart-rending it was when the musicians sang about how the king sharpened his knife before killing his own son for the offering. She remembered the song describing how he sharpened his knife on sandalwood and then on a vermilion slab. When they sang, ‘As the mother held the son’s hands and feet, the father slit his throat,’ she heard many women sobbing away in the audience. When the ordeal was over and Seeralan was brought back to life, the custom was to wave two lemons around him in a circle. No matter how many people came with lemons, their lemons were circled around the person who played Seeralan and given back. Women who received a lemon in their laps were blessed with children. Ponna too received a lemon in her lap. She did that every time the Punnadayan story was sung in the village. But nothing happened.

Well, it is only from those whom he has blessed with a child that the Lord can demand such an offering. What would you ask, oh Lord, from those who don’t have children?

She wanted to leave from there.

At that moment, someone came and sat rubbing against her. In her head, she tried to classify the nature of that graze. But she couldn’t. Was this her god? She glanced slowly at the man who was rubbing and pressing down on her right shoulder. She saw an eager face with a thin moustache. His eyes looked directly into hers. She felt she had seen those eyes somewhere, but she could not remember where and when. She closed her eyes and searched her mind. By then he had sat down comfortably, huddling against her, and was trying to rest his face on her shoulder. She could not decide whether to allow it or not, but she knew she had to make up her mind before it proceeded any further. She shifted her body gently and suggested her disapproval. But she did it in a way that did not mean rejection either. It made her wonder when she had become so clever. Perhaps she had always been so. Perhaps it was finding expression only now.

Kali was adept at reading the nuances of her movements. Even if he sensed a slight rejection, he would move away immediately. At those times, it would become very hard for
her to get him interested again. She jerked her head to get Kali off her mind, and his image receded and vanished. She turned and looked. The eyes and the face she saw nudged a memory—it was as though a bolt of lightning flashed across her face, and for a moment she thought she recognized him. But it was not him; only a likeness. Ponna came of age when she was fourteen. And the face that had been in her mind then was Sakthi’s. He had been a goatherd in their farm for many years, and she had grown up playing with him. Later, when she was a young woman, his had been the face of her dreams and her imagination. When it was decided that Kali would marry her, she had struggled a lot to replace Sakthi in her mind with Kali.

Whatever she started imagining with Kali in her mind would end up with Sakthi’s face being part of the fantasy. For some time, she even vacillated between the two faces. But after the wedding, Sakthi’s face slowly faded away and over time she even forgot him completely. But here it was again, and so close to her. Suddenly, she decided she did not want him. She moved away a little and avoided the intimacy. But his heavy sigh wafted in the air and bothered her. When she turned around, his eyes were pleading with her, and his arms were stretched out towards her. She felt like laughing, but she showed him an angry face, shook her head in refusal, and turned her back to him. How easily he asked for what he wanted even in the middle of such a crowd! It amazed her that she could conduct an entire conversation with him without anyone noticing. It was only then that she
grew conscious of her surroundings. She looked around and dropped her head shyly.

On stage, Siruthondar had entered in a dance movement and was introducing himself. It looked like the dance performance might actually be good. She looked towards the man through the corner of her eye. He wasn’t there. She thought she would leave too. But that might give him the idea that she had come out looking for him. It might be good to leave after a while. The things this god did! He dug out a forgotten face from the depths of her heart and placed it in front of her. Was it her punishment to remember that face forever? ‘Please appear with a new face, one I am not familiar with,’ she prayed. Had she earned his wrath after having rejected two of the gods? Is this a crowd of gods too? Is he watching me?

It looked like there was a way leading out in every direction; there were gods wandering everywhere. ‘Come to me with a form I like,’ she kept praying. She went past the Omkali temple and reached the west chariot street. There was a wide space at the intersection with the north chariot street. Hearing some loud whistling from there, she walked in that direction. She was thirsty. Was it her mind’s thirst that was peeping out through her tongue? On the west street, there were four or five unmanned water pandals. Anyone could help themselves to the water. She drank some and splashed some cold water on her face. She felt refreshed.

She glanced at the temple down the slope. In the moonlight, its tower looked taller. When she reached the
crowded street corner, all the while praying in her mind, she saw a team of Oyilattam dancers performing there. There were over twenty of them; they all wore yellow headbands and held long red streams of cloth in their hands and danced in rhythm to the drums. She looked in amazement at how, when they took four steps in unison and turned around suddenly, the several pieces of coloured cloth that waved in the air flared and settled like snakes flying in the air with their tongues out. She was familiar with the dance. This was the same dance that was performed on all nine days of the Mariamman temple festival. Youngsters trained in summer with a teacher. Also, because it was done in the temple, it was called Koyilattam. It started with a slow movement of the hands and feet, but it gradually gained speed and reached a crescendo. And as the dance grew faster, the whistles grew louder. Sometimes, the performance opened with a song and every dance was alternated with a song. But this dance looked different, perhaps because of the colours that had been added to it.

Whenever she heard the whistles, she was beside herself, clapping and jumping in joyful laughter. It looked like she might even join the dancers. The beauty of it, when they moved to the front and turned around, was so intense that it wrapped itself around everything in the vicinity. Looking at the dancers, she wondered if men were really such beautiful creatures. She felt a wild urge to run and embrace them. She jumped and almost fell on the girl standing next to her. But the girl didn’t take it amiss; she just laughed. ‘I don’t see
women performing anywhere,’ she said in a gossipy tone. It looked like she too would have liked to join them. Ponna gave her a friendly smile.

When she felt something touching her earlobes, she reached back and wiped herself. It felt as though someone was blowing gently on her nape. She turned around and saw a pair of eyes to her side. She knew it was the touch of these eyes that had bothered her. Those eyes pierced the glow of the burning torches, and touched and teased her. The folded dhoti and the towel that was around his neck and fell over his chest made him look like no one she knew. His hair had been combed carelessly, and it looked like he had not even started shaving. It occurred to her that this was her god. His eyes smiled. His lips too were parted in a permanent grin. In a delightful, repetitive game, his eyes moved towards the dance only to turn back to her suddenly. She looked fondly at that desire-filled face. Then she closed her eyes and tried holding it in her mind. But it slipped away. She could recollect the eyes, the lips and the head separately, but she could not put them together. Why wouldn’t it stay in her mind?

It was unlike any other face that had stayed on in her mind. It was never easy for a new face to make its place in a shelf of faces. ‘This is how I expected you to be, god,’ she thought. Then his eyelashes lowered and eyebrows slanted. She understood that he wanted her to walk out with him. She was overcome with shyness. When she remembered that Kali too often spoke this way—in signs—her mind closed up. She was never able to keep Kali aside. In twelve years,
he had gradually etched himself on every fold of her heart. No one could do anything to him. She would find him in any man. She could recognize him in anyone. She felt like screaming at this image, pleading with him not to remind her of Kali. If she spoke to him in signs, he would respond like Kali too. She knew she had to leave from there and get to a place where they could talk in words.

When she emerged, parting her way through the crowd gathered around the Oyilattam troupe, he too came and joined hands with her. She was surprised that he read her mind so quickly. She felt that just a small shift of the body was enough for a man to understand a woman. The grip of his hand was comforting. He walked with her along the north chariot street. She decided to let him lead. Along the way were shops selling puttu laid out on baskets layered with white cloth. There were small crowds here and there. His lips grazed her ears when they said, ‘Shall we eat puttu?’ A male voice dripping desire and intoxication. She didn’t even think. She nodded. He peeped into every store, but didn’t stop at any.

Finally, he stopped at a shop that was halfway down the street and got hot puttu on a leaf plate covered with dry leaves stitched together. There were four portions of puttu with gravy on the side. Though she thought she might not be able to eat so much, she did not refuse. He brought his plate and ate standing next to her. She liked the way he carefully chose the puttu after considering several shops. It made her happy to think that he would have chosen her the same way.
She took some puttu and put it on his plate, but she was too shy to look up at this face. ‘Why? Enough already?’ he said.

‘Please speak some more,’ she pleaded in her mind. With a man, that was how she always felt—like he did not speak enough. You want your dear one to talk to you non-stop.

She was eating, her head bent low, when he said, ‘Selvi, look here.’ When she looked up in shock, wondering who Selvi was, he brought a handful of puttu close to her lips. She let him feed her. ‘He has given me a new name so that no one around here gets suspicious.’ She found this cleverness very attractive. He continued to feed her without any hesitation. But her diffidence came in the way of her desire to reciprocate. As if he sensed that, he said, ‘Hmmm,’ and, bending close to her, held her hand and brought it to his lips. She fed him without looking up.

When they started walking again, she literally stuck to him. She did not know the way, and she had no sense of the people around her. ‘He is my god. My job is to go where he takes me,’ was all she could think. Like a rain-soaked chicken, she huddled in his warmth. It appeared that he was taking her far away from the crowds and the noise.