Authors: Anita Nair
Ladies Coupe (32 page)
Thereafter, every afternoon when Sujata Akka and I talked, we came back to the same subject and I knew for certain that what Sujata Akka felt repelled by was not touch but a man’s touch. Was I the same? I wondered.
I didn’t know. It was as if I had retrenched all sensation to a point just below my scalp so that the only time I felt alive was when someone ran their fingertips through my hair. So one afternoon when Sujata Akka slid her fingers through my hair I felt a slow unwinding of sensation.
I didn’t know what I was doing. All I knew was that it came to me unbidden, the manner in which I could erase that pain, fulfil those desires in her … With the back of my palm, I caressed the side of her breast. With my other hand, I turned her around and very gently let my fingers slide down her spine …
Her voice crept up to greet my touch. ‘You have such magic in your fingers.’
I increased the pressure a tiny bit and felt her squirm beneath my fingers. ‘I like it when you touch me,’ she said and I knew that this was all she would ever say about how she felt.
How easy it is to pleasure a woman. She asks for little
except that she be treated as a desirable woman; that she be wooed with abandon and loved gently. With my fingers and mouth, my eyes and soul, I wet that parched body; I rained a million raindrops of sensual pleasure that she gathered with the thirst of one who is condemned to a desert for life and has lost all hope of ever chancing upon an oasis.
except that she be treated as a desirable woman; that she be wooed with abandon and loved gently. With my fingers and mouth, my eyes and soul, I wet that parched body; I rained a million raindrops of sensual pleasure that she gathered with the thirst of one who is condemned to a desert for life and has lost all hope of ever chancing upon an oasis.
I cupped, caressed and contoured. I licked, mouthed and nibbled. Nipples bloomed into garnets. Tongue grazed against hair. Cheek against cheek. Her hair coiled with mine. Our breaths met.
Her fingers slid through my palm. That was all she would do for me. It was I who had sought to give her pleasure and in her pleasure lay my reward. There was to be no more. But I didn’t care. I had loved her with my heart for so long; it seemed natural that I love her now with my body; my thwarted dreams and unfulfilled desires.
We never spoke about it. Of what had suddenly happened between us. But every afternoon when the house slumbered, I invented new ways to tease her nerve ends. To slake her thirst. To make her cry softly, ‘Enough, enough.’
Nothing had changed between us. There was no room for change in our relationship anyway. I was happy being what I was to her and I needed no more. All my capacity for loving and giving had found a vent in Sujata Akka.
So it was to preserve her happiness, her position in the household, her hold over Sridhar Anna that I welcomed Sridhar Anna into my body.
As long as I fed his appetites, he would never seek another woman. As long as I was available, he would never trouble Sujata Akka on the days he was at home. As long as it was me, I would ask no more of him than what I already had. I was sister to the real thing and I desired no more.
How easy it is to bring a man to your bed. What is perhaps difficult is to keep him happy there. I didn’t know who I should be with him: the naïve girl or the brazen whore. So I was both and he seemed to revel in it. I must
confess though that from those moments of his ecstasy, I managed to drain a few dregs for myself. I hadn’t sought it and so when it happened, I treated it as it was meant to be – as a windfall.
confess though that from those moments of his ecstasy, I managed to drain a few dregs for myself. I hadn’t sought it and so when it happened, I treated it as it was meant to be – as a windfall.
Sometimes I thought of the irony of it all and smiled to myself. By day I gathered with Sujata Akka lilies by a giant lake where herons fished and a gentle breeze blew, ruffling the brown heads of the bulrushes. And by night, Sridhar Anna drove me to the centre of the earth, where molten lava clutched at my feet as I heaved, panted and burnt in the crush of his embrace.
Neither of them loved me. But they needed me. Those who can’t have love have to settle for need. What is love if not a need disguised?
When my mother died, my charmed life fell apart. After the funeral, my brothers said, ‘Akka, it’s time you took Muthu away. All these years you shied away from what was your responsibility. When Amma was alive, she let you do as you wished. But we don’t want to be responsible for him any more. It isn’t as if you are not alive and earning.’
I heard them out silently. They were bonded in a brotherhood of respectability. I was the outsider who had trespassed into a land of shame. No matter how hard I tried to distance myself from it, they saw only what they wanted to see. I no longer had room or rights in that house.
‘Keep him here for a few more days,’ I said. ‘I have to make arrangements. I have to tell Sujata Akka about this.’
What was I going to do with the boy? Would Sujata Akka let me keep him there? Over the past few months, I had noticed how she grudged my spending time on anything or anyone but herself. She even disliked me watching TV by myself. Only my nights she left alone. Sridhar Anna, no matter how long he was with me, slept in their bed and by her side.
But when I returned to the Chettiar Kottai, it was to
discover that once again the seams of my life had been ripped apart.
discover that once again the seams of my life had been ripped apart.
Sujata Akka was cold and distant. In the afternoon when I went to her room, the door was shut and latched from within. Was she angry with me for having stayed away so long?
I sighed. I couldn’t help it. Sometimes Sujata Akka was unreasonable. In my head, I pieced together words of apology, messages of love. Once I explained, she would revert back to my beloved Sujata Akka.
I returned to my room and waited. She would come looking for me soon. In the evening, just as I had expected her to, Sujata Akka marched into the west wing. ‘I want you to pack up and leave right now,’ she said.
‘What are you saying?’ I asked, suddenly frightened by her quivering nostrils, the anger in her eyes, the contempt in her voice.
‘How could you do this to me?’ she demanded. ‘How could you steal my husband away from me? Did you think I would never find out?
‘And I never would have, the silly trusting fool that I am … if I hadn’t come in here yesterday to have this room cleaned out. I said to myself: it’s been shut up for so long, let me get it cleaned and ready for Marikolanthu … I saw his things in here. And suddenly I realized why he has stopped pestering me for some time now. He has you, his whore, right under my roof, that’s why.
‘How could you forget all that I have done for you? You repay me with treachery …’
Her words squeezed my breath and choked my reply. ‘I did it for you,’ I tried to explain. ‘I know how much you hated it when he came near you and at the same time I didn’t want you to lose him to another woman.’
‘You are another woman,’ she stood stiff, impervious to my pleas.
‘But not in the way you think. I wanted nothing more than for you to be happy.’ I touched her arm.
She shook my hand off. ‘I should have known. I should have guessed this about you. You are unnatural. Do you know that? You turn away from your own child. You prefer a mad woman’s company to your mother’s. In the daytime, you pretend to be my friend, at night you feed on my husband’s lust. What kind of fiend are you?’
‘You should know,’ I retorted, angry myself. ‘We share more than your husband. What will you do once you send me away? Who will love you the way I do?’
‘Shut up, shut up, will you?’ Sujata Akka’s voice rose to a scream. ‘You are a wicked creature. I know you used black magic to make me your slave … make me do things no woman would … but not any more, it won’t work any more. Get out of this house before I have you thrown out.’
I left the Chettiar Kottai. I didn’t collect the money she owed me as salary. I wanted to have nothing more to do with her. She had distorted my love for her with an ugliness I couldn’t bear to see.
In my brother’s home, I pleaded for a reprieve. ‘I need a few more days,’ I said. ‘Sujata Akka is making arrangements to send him away to a school in Kancheepuram,’ I lied, not knowing what else to do. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. ‘The child and I will have to stay here for a few more days. Is that too much for a sister to ask of her brothers?’
I saw their faces blanch. But they agreed reluctantly.
I lay on the mat and stared at the ceiling. The dull ache lower down in my belly began. At first, when Sridhar Anna began to sleep with me, I was afraid I would become pregnant. But he said I shouldn’t worry and that he’d be careful. As if to reassure me, my periods became longer and heavier. Then the pain began. A dull pain that frequently turned into a throbbing one; a heaviness. That night, the pains were so bad that in the morning, I knew I could no longer put it off and I would have to go to the doctor.
I had a growth in my womb. Many of them, in fact. Flesh within my flesh that fed on my body and grew. A
hundred tiny children devouring me alive. I had to have the womb, their home, removed. Where was I going to find the money for the operation?
hundred tiny children devouring me alive. I had to have the womb, their home, removed. Where was I going to find the money for the operation?
I had four hundred rupees. I had never thought to put aside even a single paisa. I had kept a little money for myself and handed over the rest of my earnings to my mother. I could ask Sridhar Anna and he would give me the money. But that would make me a whore. Someone who accepted money for letting a man use her body. I thought of Sujata Akka’s face. I didn’t want anything that belonged to her. Neither her husband nor his money.
In the bus back to the village, I made up my mind. It was time the boy paid his dues. It was time Murugesan paid for what he did to me.
I took the boy to Kancheepuram, where the looms were. To Murugesan’s looms. Murugesan wasn’t there. He had become a busy man, a rich man, they told me. He travelled a great deal. He went by plane to foreign countries. Orders for his silk came from far-away places. But I didn’t want to see Murugesan. His manager would do. His manager knew what I wanted. Others like me had been there before. It was a matter of mere routine for him. Every day they took on boys to stretch the warps of the loom and feed in the threads to form the intricate patterns of the silk saris they wove. So I mortgaged the boy to Murugesan’s looms for the next two years in return for five thousand rupees. He would be paid ten rupees a day. Thirty days made three hundred rupees; twelve months would fetch three thousand six hundred rupees. All I needed was five thousand rupees. The rest of the money would pay for the boy’s keep.
A perverse satisfaction flared within me. Murugesan might not know it but I had sold him his own son. I had finally collected rent for nine months of housing the boy. With the rent money raised from the boy’s sweat and blood, I would destroy the house and the bond that wove our lives together.
‘Is this the new school that Sujata Akka has sent me to? It
doesn’t look like a school,’ the boy said. He was only eight years old, but he understood more than he had been told.
doesn’t look like a school,’ the boy said. He was only eight years old, but he understood more than he had been told.
I nodded and then decided that I would tell him the truth. ‘This isn’t a school. This is a silk loom. They will teach you a trade here; how to weave. In that sense, it is like a school.’
The boy didn’t say anything. He looked at his feet. I gave him the small cloth bag with his clothes and things. ‘I have to go,’ I said.
‘When will you come to take me back home?’ he asked.
‘There is no home any more. But I will come back one of these days,’ I said and walked away.
After the surgery, the pain disappeared but the heaviness remained. It dragged my feet and numbed my mind. I decided to stay on in Kancheepuram. The village with its mango orchard and Chettiar Kottai carried too many memories. I found a job as a cook. A series of jobs. As soon as the smells of a household began to permeate my pores, I left. I was a restless spirit, warped and bitter. Sometimes I would think of the past and I would feel a quickening in the vacuum that existed within me now.
A year later, Murugesan died. I read about it in the Tamil newspaper they bought in the house I was working in. He had gone to Singapore on business and while there, he had a heart attack. His body would reach his home, the paper said, in three or four days.
The road to the cremation ground was two streets away from the house I worked in. I waited with my ears cocked. The moment I heard a funeral procession go past, I rushed to the terrace from where I could see the goings on quite clearly. On the fourth day after the news item appeared, his funeral procession went past. He was laid out on a byre, dressed in sparkling white clothes. If he had died here, they would have seated him in a chair as though he were alive. But his body must have stiffened and they would have had to break his back and limbs to fit him into a chair.
Drumbeats rang through the air and his sons, his legitimate sons, walked holding a pot of water in their hands. Flowers rained and I was glad that the green sprigs of marikolanthu would never grace the body of that creature. Rose petals and marigolds, chrysanthemum strands and lilies of the valley – the air was heavy with the fragrance of flowers and incense. Urchins danced as they always did at funerals, twisting and wriggling their bodies with a manic joy, light on their feet, whistling through their teeth to the rhythm of the drum beat. Among the urchins, I spotted the boy.
Dance, dance, I told the boy. Dance at your own father’s funeral and let his spirit watch you with sorrow. That you celebrate his passing with such glorious abandon.
The cremation ground was bathed in the evening light. It was the month of January. The night would come early. How strange, I thought, struck by the coincidence. It was in January that he had destroyed my life and now in another January, his life had come to an end.
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