Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

‘And what may I promise you, Little Mother?’

‘Promise that we will never interfere in your life. Your Father once said, Rama, “He’s always been an independent child. He never will obey anyone unless he can be convinced. Let him lead his own life.” That was what He said to us again when your letter came announcing your marriage. What your father respected I shall respect, Rama.’

In the car, just as we had left the sea and were going up Malabar Hill, I said:

‘And how shall I be of help — so far away, and with so alien an existence.’

‘Simply by writing to us often; and coming to us every two or three years. So that they know there’s a head of the household, an elder brother; so that the children feel they are protected, and there’s one whom they have to obey.’

‘Well, for marriages and initiation ceremonies!’ I said and laughed.

‘And when Sridhara is big like you he will take charge of the household. Won’t you, you foolish little baby?’ she said, and laughed too. Sridhara was asleep.

It was late when we arrived home, but the prasad of the Walkeshwar temple was wonderful to bring back and we all ate happily, and later the eldest daughter of Venkatasubbayya sang some film songs.

From that evening on Little Mother spoke more simply to me. She would say, ‘Now I must take dates for Sukumari, and chocolate for Saroja,’ or she would talk of Kapila, the eldest daughter, who had quarrelled with Father and had never set foot in the household again. Since she married into a ‘big house’ in Mysore and became a daughter-in-law with golden girdle and diamond earrings her very nature seemed to have changed. She was, of course, my sister, but there was as much in common between us as between jasmine and tamarind. Let the tamarind grow, I said, and become the village-gate tree.

The whole family was at the station when we arrived, including the Other-House people, Seena, Kitta and even Uncle Seetharamu. Grandfather Kittanna, too, had sent us his benediction: I would go and see him the next day. Everybody was happy to see me, and so impressed with the dignity and serenity of Little Mother. She had left such a helpless and broken-down woman — almost a girl — and now she returned with natural dignity. She walked as though space was not something unreal and undependable, but this was her own earth, her own home, her own backyard, with the moon-guava and the well.

Saroja was the first to remark, ‘Oh, Little Mother, you seem so changed. You have grown thinner, but you look more like Brother Rama’s sister than our Mother.’

‘Yes,’ I told Saroja, ‘I have become the head of the family now. And since I must return to Europe soon Little Mother will be my representative, with the power of the baton and the bank account,’

‘We obey,’ said Saroja, looking at me shyly.

That evening everyone vied with the others to make Little Mother’s bed, and then mine. The whole house seemed to have banished sorrow from the world. Here someone sang, there others had their faces in their books. Sridhara already lay on his mother’s bed, as if he, too, felt the world was a safe and good place, and that when he grew up Little Mother would have nothing to bend and break, nor a thing to carry. Milk would flow in the house and the cattle would fill the courtyard with holiness.

Till late in the night lying on the veranda — for it was so hot already — Little Mother told of all her experiences in the north. I nearly feel asleep, but she woke me up and said, ‘Do you remember, Rama, that meal in Calcutta? You know what they did Saroja? We bought meal tickets at the station Hindu restaurant. “Brahmin or non-Brahmin?” they asked. “Brahmin,” we answered. And when I went to the Brahmin section the whole place looked funny. It was not that I had not been to restaurants before — I have even eaten in Brahmin hotels at Bangalore — but there it was different. They started serving. I put my hand into the curry. It seemed very soft to touch, but yielded with such difficulty. “Brinjal it must be,” I said, and looked at Rama. Rama, who’s been all over the world, he also proceeded with care. Saroja, thank God I did not put it into my mouth. You know what it was — it was fish. “Ayyappa!” I said, and rose hastily. I would have thrown the whole of my stomach out. They laughed at us and explained that in Bengal Brahmins do eat fish; they call it “the vegetable of the sea”. Ayyayyo,’ said Little Mother, ‘I could have put my hand into fire, as we do impure vessels, to get the touch of it out of my skin. Thoo!’ spat Little Mother, and how Saroja laughed. ‘Say what you will, Saroja, the northerners haven’t the sensibility of living such as we have. You can see married women without kunkum on their faces, or men spitting on the floor. And as for dirt, well, the less said the better. It is something, Saroja, to be born a Brahmin,’ she said, and became silent.

Sleep carne with the fresh breeze that blew from the crackling palm trees, and now and again the smell of jasmine wafted above us. I knew I was home.

It was Saroja in fact who made me feel I was back home and in India. When I first came back after Father’s illness I was too busy with doctors and visitors to think of being back home. I took Little Mother to the North not to see India myself, but to show India to her and make her ‘inauspiciousness’ familiar to herself. Now here I was, back again on the veranda of Vishnu Bhavan, quiet, on my own, with the sound of the toddy palms at the back, and the smell of jasmine coming with the midnight breezes. The tap in the street still purred, despite changes of government and municipal constitution, and the blind Tiger, my father’s favourite dog, still hunted the fleas on his back, even at night.

‘How does a blind thing know night from day?’ Little Mother asked.

Tiger always had fleas, so one day some four or five years before I had bought a bottle of phenol and given him such a scrub that some of the liquid entered his eyes. He could hardly see anything afterwards, and he transferred his loyalties. He went to my father, he treated me as secondary in the scale of human importance. For Tiger I still existed, but just as a member of the household, albeit the eldest. One fact, however, must be said in his favour. For three days before my father’s death he never touched any food. On the day of Father’s death he howled at the moon a great deal. And the next day he let Sridhara pull his tail as much as the child liked. But Tiger never got reconciled to me. He always looked at the gate, as though the doors would open and Father would come in again.

Saroja had grown so lovely. At seventeen, Lord, how beautiful the world could be! She was tall and was fair in a family where most of us are fair. And her silence had a quality that made living cervine. Saroja would never say anything important to anyone, and yet by some abrupt inconsequentiality she would say something you had been waiting to name. She had a deep and a noble wisdom. And she could talk so much, tell such stories, read your hand or invent a tale about her class- companions; but always it was to hide something of her own.

Sukumari was different; she was afraid of something, so she always quarrelled. What was red to Saroja was always pink and white to Sukumari, and the discussion usually ended in a longdrawn sobbing. ‘What an inauspicious thing to be doing, and of an evening, when the lights are being lit,’ Little Mother would say, and Saroja would go into the kitchen to help her with frying the mustard for the rasam.

Each evening before the meal the younger children would recite hymns, and once the camphor was lit Saroja would sing an arathi song and I would begin ‘Rājhādhi-Rājāya …’ After the circumambulations we would eat quickly and rush back to the veranda, and the talk of what happened with the Venktaramans in Allahabad or with the Vikrams in Delhi would begin again. There had been one miserable little child of Vikram’s — Vikram had married for the fourth time at fifty-five and she eighteen— who was so ugly, such a bunch of carrots and coriander leaves, that nobody seemed to care for it. Sridhara looked a prince beside that Vithal, and at the mention of Vithal everybody laughed. Later Little Mother wrote to me that Vithal had died, of cholera.