Read Online Tell It to the Trees by Anita Rau Badami - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anita Rau Badami
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have whitewashed all my deficiencies and added the necessary gloss required for an advantageous marriage. By the time Vikram came alongI was nearly thirty, at peace with my ordinariness, and quite resigned to remaining at home with my aging father and aunt. I made a small income from coaching schoolchildren in math, reading and writing, but my needs were small and it was enough. I was happy.
When Vikram flattered me, compared me to a flower, I should have been wary because there was nothing floral about me. If I resembled anything botanical at all, it would be a banana leaf—plain, sturdy, useful. But I was as unaccustomed to male flattery as a person who has never touched alcohol. How easily I lost my head. Now, with bitter hindsight, I believe that when he looked at me he saw a woman who could be moulded, who would not rise up and complain, who would be submissive to his needs and the needs of his household, who would not fight back, as Helen had done.
Within a week of his arrival he asked Appa for my hand in marriage. Ganesh Maamu’s wife came bearing the auspicious platter of fruit, the betel leaf and the coconut. She was smiling even though everyone knew that she was put out by Vikram’s insistence that he wanted to marry me—she had talked a lot before he arrived about an alliance between him and her daughter. Ganesh Maamu too had tried to throw a spanner in the works by informing my father that Vikram’s first wife had left him before she died and that he had a young daughter from that marriage. There was also an invalid mother who needed to be looked after. My father was doubtful about the match when he heard about the child.
“I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life taking care of me and your aunt, although I would be happy to see your beloved young face every day until I die,” he said, stroking my head the way he used to do when I was a little girl in need of comfort or advice. “But I am not sure I want you to travel thousands of miles with a stranger to look after his child and mother. The decision is yours, but don’t do anything at the cost of your happiness, Sumana.”
Then Ganesh Maamu came up with the notion that it would not do for Vikram to get married without his mother’s consent. But when my father contacted Akka, all she had to say during their short telephone conversation was, “It is up to the young woman, whether she wants to marry my son or not. I have nothing to say except that I will welcome anyone he brings home with warmth. That is all I can offer—a warm welcome.”
“Must be a very modern type of woman,” Madhu Kaki commented when this information reached us—approximately five and a quarter minutes after it had hit the Triplicane air—in a tone that implied that she must also, therefore, be crazy. How could any mother allow her son the freedom to choose his own wife? Marriage was a serious business, involving a lifelong commitment on the part of two families rather than of just two individuals. It was well known that mothers could see what their sons could not. Sons were prone to blindness when it came to women, even ordinary ones such as me.
“But then, she was always a strange girl. I remember her from when we were young together,” Madhu Kakisaid, musing about Vikram’s mother who had grown up on this same street a long time ago. “Beautiful creature, no wonder her son looks like a film star. Insisted on going to college. Unheard of for a girl in those days. Her parents were freedom fighters. They had strange ideas about bringing up their daughter. There were young men from the best families lining up to marry her, but guess who she selected—a fellow from an unknown family. I don’t even know where they met—in college perhaps. She married him and a few years later we heard they’d gone away to Canada. Not a word from her since, all these years. And now suddenly her son is here about to become your husband. How strange is life!”
On my wedding
When Vikram flattered me, compared me to a flower, I should have been wary because there was nothing floral about me. If I resembled anything botanical at all, it would be a banana leaf—plain, sturdy, useful. But I was as unaccustomed to male flattery as a person who has never touched alcohol. How easily I lost my head. Now, with bitter hindsight, I believe that when he looked at me he saw a woman who could be moulded, who would not rise up and complain, who would be submissive to his needs and the needs of his household, who would not fight back, as Helen had done.
Within a week of his arrival he asked Appa for my hand in marriage. Ganesh Maamu’s wife came bearing the auspicious platter of fruit, the betel leaf and the coconut. She was smiling even though everyone knew that she was put out by Vikram’s insistence that he wanted to marry me—she had talked a lot before he arrived about an alliance between him and her daughter. Ganesh Maamu too had tried to throw a spanner in the works by informing my father that Vikram’s first wife had left him before she died and that he had a young daughter from that marriage. There was also an invalid mother who needed to be looked after. My father was doubtful about the match when he heard about the child.
“I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life taking care of me and your aunt, although I would be happy to see your beloved young face every day until I die,” he said, stroking my head the way he used to do when I was a little girl in need of comfort or advice. “But I am not sure I want you to travel thousands of miles with a stranger to look after his child and mother. The decision is yours, but don’t do anything at the cost of your happiness, Sumana.”
Then Ganesh Maamu came up with the notion that it would not do for Vikram to get married without his mother’s consent. But when my father contacted Akka, all she had to say during their short telephone conversation was, “It is up to the young woman, whether she wants to marry my son or not. I have nothing to say except that I will welcome anyone he brings home with warmth. That is all I can offer—a warm welcome.”
“Must be a very modern type of woman,” Madhu Kaki commented when this information reached us—approximately five and a quarter minutes after it had hit the Triplicane air—in a tone that implied that she must also, therefore, be crazy. How could any mother allow her son the freedom to choose his own wife? Marriage was a serious business, involving a lifelong commitment on the part of two families rather than of just two individuals. It was well known that mothers could see what their sons could not. Sons were prone to blindness when it came to women, even ordinary ones such as me.
“But then, she was always a strange girl. I remember her from when we were young together,” Madhu Kakisaid, musing about Vikram’s mother who had grown up on this same street a long time ago. “Beautiful creature, no wonder her son looks like a film star. Insisted on going to college. Unheard of for a girl in those days. Her parents were freedom fighters. They had strange ideas about bringing up their daughter. There were young men from the best families lining up to marry her, but guess who she selected—a fellow from an unknown family. I don’t even know where they met—in college perhaps. She married him and a few years later we heard they’d gone away to Canada. Not a word from her since, all these years. And now suddenly her son is here about to become your husband. How strange is life!”
On my wedding
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