Read Online Tamarind Mem by Anita Rau Badami - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Anita Rau Badami
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Family, Performing Arts, Women, East Indians, India, Mothers and daughters, Canadian Fiction, Storytelling
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session with the other
ayahs
out in the club verandah. “What a tomboy. Come here you puppy, why you hitting all the childrens in the colony like a wild thing? You bad girl, wait you, a fish
bhooth
will breathe poison over your face at night!”
That night I dreamt of a fish with glittering, sharp scales scraping its way up to my cot, its dead eyes fixed on my helpless body. Then the dreaming screaming started, and Ma came running in. “
Shani!
Devil girl, why is she turning my hair grey like this? Is she possessed or what?”
The next morning she shouted at Linda, cursed Dadda and Aunty Vijaya. “Stuff this silly girl’s brains with more idiotic stories!
Deva-deva,
there is no room left in her head for sense!”
But Linda Ayah still spun her spider webs, Dadda crammed moreandmore stories in my head, and soon itwas summer, time for the Aunties to arrive, for Aunty Vijaya to cover the heated months with trailing histories, rambling family sagas, all of which knotted and looped messy as Meera Aunty’s mad knitting, till I felt that I did not exist except in somebody’s story, completely fictional.
A sunbeam shot straight through my living-room window, was caught by the prismatic jewel hanging there and splintered into dancing rainbows on the walls. I hoped that the rainbows would stay till my neighbour brought her daughter over. Claire stayed with me on Tuesdays while her mother was away at work. She was a solemn child who perched delicately on the edge of my sofa, nibbled at a cookie and listened to the stories with which I entertained her. Sometimes I spread out all of Ma’s brightly coloured postcards on the floor and we would cook up wild adventures for the travelling mommy, as Claire liked to call my mother. At other times, I would simply tell her about my crazy Aunty Meera, Linda Ayah and Ganesh Peon, the ghosts in the tamarind tree, or the cobra in our Bhusaval garden.
Long, long ago, I would begin, there was an old witch named Linda Ayah who had great big knuckles and four eyes. She sat in the verandah of a house with bougainvillaea and morning-glory and jasmine and spun stories out of warm yellow sunshine, honeybee murmurs, the flash of a kingfisher’s wing. She reached out into thin air and drew out ghosts and imps; she clapped her hands and dancing girls and jugglers swirled and tumbled on the floor.
A little girl sat before her, open-mouthed, and demanded, “Is it true, is it real?”
“Everything is true, and everything is false. It is the storyteller and the listener who decide what-what is what,” said Linda Ayah.
I wished that I could summon Linda Ayah up from the past and ask her, “Tell me, was Paul da Costa real or not? Tell me, if he was such a magician with cars, if he fixed them so they never-ever broke, why did he come every Sunday for one whole year?”
Perhaps Linda Ayah would have asked, “Who is this Paul person you keep talking about? Why you thinking of useless mens all the time, hanh? I will tell your Ma wait and see.”
Or she might have patted a warm spot beside her on the verandah and begun a new story, “Once upon a time, there was a poor fool who had no brains, only magic in his head. He fell in love with a queen as beautiful as a blue lotus blossom.”
Butbut, Linda Ayah was only a shadow in a child’s landscape. She was probably dead, or perhaps she had moved on to another Railway family. Did she tell her new Baby-missies that there were ghosts swinging from the rafters? Did she tell them about the clever goat-girl who stole fire from an evil sorcerer and flew away? And when the Baby-missy asked, “But Linda Ayah, how can a girl fly?” did she nod wisely and say, “That is the story way, my sugar child”?
In stories things could be made to happen. You could grow wings on heroes, or give the heroine a voice like a koyal bird, and people never died. In real life, if you brayed like a donkey, no amount of honey could sweeten your throat; people went away and
ayahs
out in the club verandah. “What a tomboy. Come here you puppy, why you hitting all the childrens in the colony like a wild thing? You bad girl, wait you, a fish
bhooth
will breathe poison over your face at night!”
That night I dreamt of a fish with glittering, sharp scales scraping its way up to my cot, its dead eyes fixed on my helpless body. Then the dreaming screaming started, and Ma came running in. “
Shani!
Devil girl, why is she turning my hair grey like this? Is she possessed or what?”
The next morning she shouted at Linda, cursed Dadda and Aunty Vijaya. “Stuff this silly girl’s brains with more idiotic stories!
Deva-deva,
there is no room left in her head for sense!”
But Linda Ayah still spun her spider webs, Dadda crammed moreandmore stories in my head, and soon itwas summer, time for the Aunties to arrive, for Aunty Vijaya to cover the heated months with trailing histories, rambling family sagas, all of which knotted and looped messy as Meera Aunty’s mad knitting, till I felt that I did not exist except in somebody’s story, completely fictional.
A sunbeam shot straight through my living-room window, was caught by the prismatic jewel hanging there and splintered into dancing rainbows on the walls. I hoped that the rainbows would stay till my neighbour brought her daughter over. Claire stayed with me on Tuesdays while her mother was away at work. She was a solemn child who perched delicately on the edge of my sofa, nibbled at a cookie and listened to the stories with which I entertained her. Sometimes I spread out all of Ma’s brightly coloured postcards on the floor and we would cook up wild adventures for the travelling mommy, as Claire liked to call my mother. At other times, I would simply tell her about my crazy Aunty Meera, Linda Ayah and Ganesh Peon, the ghosts in the tamarind tree, or the cobra in our Bhusaval garden.
Long, long ago, I would begin, there was an old witch named Linda Ayah who had great big knuckles and four eyes. She sat in the verandah of a house with bougainvillaea and morning-glory and jasmine and spun stories out of warm yellow sunshine, honeybee murmurs, the flash of a kingfisher’s wing. She reached out into thin air and drew out ghosts and imps; she clapped her hands and dancing girls and jugglers swirled and tumbled on the floor.
A little girl sat before her, open-mouthed, and demanded, “Is it true, is it real?”
“Everything is true, and everything is false. It is the storyteller and the listener who decide what-what is what,” said Linda Ayah.
I wished that I could summon Linda Ayah up from the past and ask her, “Tell me, was Paul da Costa real or not? Tell me, if he was such a magician with cars, if he fixed them so they never-ever broke, why did he come every Sunday for one whole year?”
Perhaps Linda Ayah would have asked, “Who is this Paul person you keep talking about? Why you thinking of useless mens all the time, hanh? I will tell your Ma wait and see.”
Or she might have patted a warm spot beside her on the verandah and begun a new story, “Once upon a time, there was a poor fool who had no brains, only magic in his head. He fell in love with a queen as beautiful as a blue lotus blossom.”
Butbut, Linda Ayah was only a shadow in a child’s landscape. She was probably dead, or perhaps she had moved on to another Railway family. Did she tell her new Baby-missies that there were ghosts swinging from the rafters? Did she tell them about the clever goat-girl who stole fire from an evil sorcerer and flew away? And when the Baby-missy asked, “But Linda Ayah, how can a girl fly?” did she nod wisely and say, “That is the story way, my sugar child”?
In stories things could be made to happen. You could grow wings on heroes, or give the heroine a voice like a koyal bird, and people never died. In real life, if you brayed like a donkey, no amount of honey could sweeten your throat; people went away and
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