Aravind Adiga - Between the Assassinations

That night, after dinner, Jayamma proposed to the advocate that on the holy day she take Karthik to the Kittamma Devi Temple near the train station.

“He should not fall out of the habit of prayer now that his mother is no more, should he?” she said meekly.

“That’s a good idea…” The advocate picked up his newspaper.

Jayamma breathed in for courage.

“If you could give me a few rupees towards the rickshaw…”

She knocked on the little girl’s room. She opened her fist triumphantly.

“Five rupees! The advocate gave me five rupees!”

Jayamma took a bath in the servants’ toilet, lathering herself thoroughly in sandalwood soap. Changing from her vermilion sari to her purple one, she walked up to the boy’s room, relishing the fragrance of her own skin, feeling like someone important.

“Get dressed, brother-we’ll miss the five o’clock pooja.”

The boy was on his bed, punching at the buttons of a small handheld electronic game: Bip! Bip! Bip!

“I’m not coming.”

“Brother-it’s a temple. We should go!”

“No.”

“Brother…what would your mother say if she were…”

The boy put his game down for a second. He walked up to the door of his room, and slammed it in Jayamma’s face.

She lay in the storage room, seeking comfort in the fumes of the DDT and the sight of the Baby Krishna’s silver buttocks. The door creaked open. A small black face, coated in Johnson’s Baby Powder, smiled at her.

“Jayamma-Jayamma-take me to the temple instead…”

The two of them sat quietly in the autorickshaw.

“Wait here,” Jayamma said at the entrance to the temple. She bought a packet of flowers with fifty paise of her own money.

“Here.” She guided the girl to place the basket in the hands of the priest when they were in the temple.

A throng of devotees had gathered around the silver lingam. Little boys jumped high to strike the temple bells around the deity. They struggled in vain, and then their fathers hoisted them up. Jayamma caught Shaila leaping high at a bell.

“Shall I lift you up?”

At five, the pooja got under way. In a bronze plate, flames rose from camphor cubes. Two women blew giant conches; a brass gong was struck, faster and faster. Then one of the Brahmins rushed out with a copper plate that burned at one end, and Jayamma dropped a coin into it, while the girl reached forward with her palms for the holy fire.

The two of them sat out on the veranda of the temple, on whose walls hung the giant drums that were played at weddings. Jayamma remarked on the scandal of a woman decked in a sleeveless blouse heading toward the temple gate. Shaila thought the sleeveless style was quite “sporty.” A screaming child was being pulled along by her father to the temple door. She quieted down when Jayamma and Shaila both began to pet her.

The two servants left the temple reluctantly. Birds rose up from the trees as they waited for a rickshaw. Bands of incandescent clouds piled up one above the other like military decorations as the sun set. Jayamma began fighting with the rickshaw driver over the price to go home, and Shaila giggled the whole time, infuriating the old woman and the driver alike.

“Jayamma-have you heard the big news?”

The old lady looked up from the newspaper spread out on the threshold. She removed her glasses and blinked at the girl.

“About the price of jaggery?”

“No, not that.”

“About the man in Kasargod who gave birth?”

“No, not that either.” The girl grinned shyly. “I’m getting married.”

Jayamma’s lips parted. She turned her head down, took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes.

“When?”

“Next month. The marriage has been fixed. The advocate told me this yesterday. He will send my gold necklace directly to my village.”

“So you think you’re a queen now, huh?” Jayamma snapped. “Because you’re getting hitched to some village bumpkin!”

She saw Shaila run to the compound wall to spread the tidings to the thick-lipped Christian. “I’m getting married, I’m getting married,” the girl sang sweetly all day long.

Jayamma cautioned her from the kitchen, “You think it’s any big deal being married? Don’t you know what happened to my sister Ambika?”

But the girl was too full of herself to listen. She just sang all day:

“I’m getting married, I’m getting married!”

So at night, it was the Baby Krishna who got to hear the story of the luckless Ambika, punished for her sins in a previous life:

Ambika, the sixth daughter and the last to be married, was the family beauty. A rich doctor wanted her for his son. Excellent news! When the groom came to see Ambika, he left for the bathroom repeatedly. “See how shy he is,” the women all said, giggling. On the wedding night, he lay with his back turned to Ambika’s face. He coughed all night. In the morning, she saw blood on the sheets. He notified her that she had married a man with advanced tuberculosis. He had wanted to be honest, but his mother would not let him. “Someone has put black magic on your family, you wretched girl,” he said, as his body was racked by fits of coughing. A month later, he was dead on a hospital bed. His mother told the village that the girl, and all her sisters, were cursed, and no one would agree to marry any of the other children.

“And that’s the true story of why I’m a virgin,” Jayamma wanted the infant Krishna to know. “In fact, I had such thick hair, such golden skin, I was considered a beauty, you know that?” She raised her eyebrows archly, like a film actress, suspecting that the little god did not entirely believe her. “Sometimes I thank my stars I never married. What if I too had been deceived, like Ambika? Better a spinster than a widow, any day…And yet that little lower-caste can’t stop singing about it every minute of the morning…” Lying in the dark, Jayamma mimicked the little lower-caste’s voice for the baby god’s benefit:

“‘I’m getting married, I’m getting married…’”

The day came for Shaila’s departure. The advocate said he would himself drive the girl home in his green Ambassador.

“I’m going, Jayamma. ”

The old lady was brushing her silver hair on the threshold. She felt that Shaila was pronouncing the name with deliberate tartness. “I’m going to get married.” The old lady kept brushing her hair. “Write to me sometime, won’t you, Jayamma? You Brahmins are such fine letter writers, the best of the best…”

Jayamma tossed the plastic comb into a corner of the storage room. “To hell with you, you little lower-caste vermin!”

The weeks passed. Now she had to do the girl’s work too. By the time dinner was served and the dishes cleaned, she was spent. The advocate made no mention of hiring a new servant. She understood that from now on it was up to her to perform the lower-caste’s work too.

In the evenings, she took to wandering in the backyard with her long silver hair down at the sides. One evening, Rosie, the thick-lipped Christian, waved at her.

“What happened to Shaila? Did she get married?”

Thrown into confusion, Jayamma grinned.

She started to watch Rosie. How carefree those Christians were-eating whatever they wanted, marrying and divorcing whenever they felt like it.

One night the two demons came back. She lay paralyzed for many minutes, listening to the screeching of the spirits, which had disguised themselves as cats once again. She clutched the idol of Baby Krishna, rubbing its silver buttocks while sitting on a bag of rice surrounded by the moat of DDT; she began to sing:

A star is whispering

Of my heart’s deep longing

To see you once more,