The next morning there was a buzz in the air. People stood in clusters, murmuring and looking wary.
I asked Roma what was going on.
“Someone was in the house last night. Dropped the
brass vase in the sitting room near Appachan’s* room. When they checked
the house, all the doors were locked.” (FC 75)
I was flummoxed. I hadn’t thought of the burglar angle.
“Er… was anything stolen?”
“No! That’s the strange thing. Appachan said he heard
people running, but no one woke up except Georgechyan and Pilipochyan.” Their
rooms were near Appachan’s. “Ammachi^ says she can’t make out if anything was
taken.” Maybe except jaggery and snacks. Ammachi’s grandchildren had been
making inroads into her legendary stocks of savouries – one of the boys had got
a spare key made to Ammachi’s snack-morgasboard and the key was passed around. Snacking
never seemed to be an issue in Amma’s parents’ home – my grandmother and great
grandmother left cakes and snacks out on the side table for the kids and
adults. There was just one rule – everyone had to eat well at meal times.
Every time we walked past Appachan’s door, I glanced
at it. When he was away in the fields and everyone seemed busy, I examined the
door. I ran my fingers over the dent in the door, where the sharp mouth of the
worked vase had gouged out the wood.
A hand slapped the back of my head hard. I felt humiliation wash over me. I had done my best to avoid being hit during this trip. I whirled around.
Mobby… and Fatty, holding a ladle. I wondered if it
was hot. “Don’t hit me.”
“Hahaha. Why not, baby? Do you know something about
the door?” He watched me carefully.
“Yes.”
Shock crossed their faces. “What do you know!” Ammachi
pushed Mobby aside and I leaned away to avoid the saliva popping out
of her mouth. Shee!
She was squeezing my shoulder hard and I twisted myself out
of her painful grip. “I-I heard a loud noise and some footsteps.”
“And?” Mobby said. He looked uncomfortable and his jaw
was tight.
“Nothing. Is it true, Ammachi, there was a robber in
the house last night?” I tried not to watch my cousin openly.
“Yes. They stole food. And were trying to take the
brass vase and some uralis (traditional brass utensils).”
“How many uralis were stolen?”
“Er… nothing… so far… but the kitchen was in disarray.
I have work to do.” She marched away. I wondered what Ammachi had to do. Every day
she sat on a chair in the kitchen and ordered the womenfolk about, while
looking for chores for her granddaughters. In Ammachi’s eyes everyone was idle
and needed to be gainfully occupied.
“She’s training you girls,” Amma said when I complained.
“For what?”
“For marriage. No need to act so surprised. Your
husband’s family will expect you to have all those, these, skills. And more.” I
hopped on each leg, trying to keep quiet.
“B-but Uncle John helps Aunty Glory in the kitchen,” I
said of my parents’ friends in Mumbai “and Appa he…” I was going to say “Appa
helps you”, but my mother shook her head. Even if some husbands helped their
wives in the kitchen, that was best kept under wraps.
“Strange ideas all these girls have,” my father’s
older sister Sarayumama said, rolling her eyes at the mound of rice in the wide
rattan tray on her lap. “They think their husbands will be modern like American
men and do housework. Hah!” She was concentrating on picking out tiny stones
from the rice and had barely progressed all morning. Her sisters-in-law didn’t
react and kept working.
But Ammachi didn’t relent. In addition to embroidery
and sewing, we were made to cook, clean and keep house. For that is what good
Syrian Christian girls did! It was a good thing Ammachi didn’t know that all
this ended once we went home – all her children employed maids. Ammachi probably
wanted to believe that we still swept and scrubbed the windows, even with a
maid around. I didn’t understand why. Most of our relatives in Kerala had at
least one elderly servant, and managed some staff for busy periods like
vacations.
Anyway, early every evening, all the girls were lined
up and made to peel or chop or mash something. Then, whether we wanted to or
not, we stood next to the older girls while they fried what we had mashed and moulded into
flat balls and another older cousin simultaneously boiled a massive tureen of water
and milk for the tea on a four-burner stove. In the background, our grandmother
shouted instructions.
If guests arrived, our pain worsened. Or, I should say,
humiliation. We were made to serve them. All the while our relatives, mostly
men, joked about us getting married – how imminent marriage was, that parents
had to look for a groom years in advance, cooking skills were in demand, good
manners, blah blah blah and bloody blah.
And then there were the sly jokes about marrying
doctors, engineers, civil servants and NRIs. The implication was that if we
looked pretty enough, or were fair enough, or were ladylike and well mannered,
and wore enough gold ornaments to blind an oil-rich sheikh, we’d marry well and
save our parents a large dowry.
My older cousins preened, drew their eyes religiously,
Appachan frowned at lipstick, and went on sari-buying missions. The younger
girls watched and our eyes popped at the silks and materials. My cousin brothers
waited for every opportunity to tease their cousins about marriage and boys and
grooms. And they tossed newspapers and wrappers and even banana peels in
corners, expecting the girls to pick up the trash. Bobby told an irate Shyla
that it was practice for marriage.
This sort of crass behaviour was
unusual. So far. For some reason, the boys began to harass the girls more. The
elders would get into a snit and demand to know who had thrown the garbage on
the ground and why no one had picked it up.
Because of our idiot cousins, we girls were on
tenterhooks and had to sweep the house at least twice a day and be on the
lookout for rubbish on the floor. All we seemed to be doing was tidying up
after our cousins.
The younger boys, and those with sisters, eventually stopped.
But the older boys, Mobby, Bobby, Joey, Tino and Tomo, accelerated their
efforts.
One day we decided to see what would happen if we
didn’t pick up after the boys for the whole day. Just before tea time, Ammachi cornered
the younger girls in a bedroom and gave us a tongue lashing and stiff lecture
about filth and faith – it was hard to find a connection. Ammachi sounded like
a medieval priest run amok. We kept our heads down because she
waved a fat stick at us.
My male cousins listened from the doorway and
sniggered, while Bobby and Mobby guffawed. Over the next few days they diligently
dropped fruit peels, bits of paper, trimmed nails, plastic bags and more. They
took care not to do so in their bedroom – even they were afraid of Sarayumama.
The girls complained to their parents. My uncles admonished the boys and they
nodded dutifully, but continued their torment.
One day my grandfather’s brother and his family, from
down the road, came over for lunch. As is customary, the men and older boys had
lunch first. We wiped the table clean for the next set of diners – the ladies. This
time, the boys had gone a step further and dropped food on the floors. There was
not much we could do about it now. It was awkward seeing our great aunt, her
daughters-in-law and grandchildren walking around the dining table to their
chairs in discomfort – the food on the ground stuck to their bare feet.
The dining room floor was a mess and soon it found its
way into the sitting room with the guests. And, finally, what we had tried hard
to avoid for weeks happened. Appachan, finical about cleanliness, blew his
gasket. First, he aimed his fury at his wife, then at his daughters and then at
his granddaughters.
Ammachi screamed at the girls to get brooms and mops and
we went to work cleaning the dining room floor, while the guests sat in
uncomfortable silence in the sitting room. Appachan banged the connecting door shut
and, slowly the dull murmur of a reviving conversation began.
Rice and curry were smashed into the floor and had
dried up. It was disgusting. The braver among us tried to scrape it off the
floor with our fingernails but couldn’t. We poured soap water on the floor and tried
to wash away the mess with a spindly broom, but the food clung stubbornly to
the floor. Finally, we brought in a tough brush we used to scrub moss off the
concrete area near the kitchen garden. We scrubbed the floor in turns. It was
an effort to get the soap off the floor and we had to swab the floor many times
until it stopped being slippery. We watched as years of dirt was sucked out of the
floor and it almost shone. But it was a deadening, humiliating experience. All
the older ladies had disappeared into the sitting room with my grandmother and
we girls were alone in the dining room, toiling quietly, feeling miserable.
Once we were done, we stood to the side, watching the
floor dry under the fan. Bobby walked in through the study door at one side of
the dining room. We watched in horror as his food-caked slippers instantly
dirtied our floors. He seemed to revel in it. Despite our protests, he walked
around the dining room, around the table a couple of times, drank straight from
a bottle of water without using a glass, smirked at all of us and finally stopped
to admire his handiwork.
Most of the girls seemed to be in a stupor. It was
when he laughed that Roma ran forward and punched Bobby in his gut. The air
left his body in a shrill sigh and he doubled over. Then she slammed her elbow
into his back several times until the older girls pried her off and dragged her
away. Nina grabbed his slippers, ran into Appachan’s study and threw them out
of the window as far as she could in different directions. There was a narrow dirt
road nearby and in all likelihood the slippers would fall into the puddles
there. Nina returned, locking the study door with the key that always stayed in
the lock and tucked it into her bra.
Bobby was cowering and mewling loudly on the floor, a
dish towel stuffed into his mouth, and the little girls were now pummelling and
kicking him. Nina and Shyla pulled them off one by one and nearly threw them at
the kitchen doorway. Sarah, Georgiechyan’s daughter, gently turned the key in
the lock of the dining room door leading to the sitting room, pulled it out and
slipped it into her kurta pocket. She whispered to us to get out and gestured
wildly at the kitchen door.
Once we were all in the kitchen, the older girls
latched the kitchen door from the kitchen and the other connecting doors. All
of us rushed out into the backyard. Nina and Shyla pushed
Sonimol chechi, the maid, out of the door and ordered her to stay out of the
way and not to tell anyone what she had just seen. They latched the kitchen door
from the outside of the house and all of us ran in different directions.
Some of my cousins went into the fields adjoining the
house and onto the road. They began walking briskly to the junction. They were
following Sarah, who was walking towards the church. That was where she often
went and stayed for hours. It wasn’t piety, like the others thought. She hated
the tedium of household work and often took books and newspapers with her. Though
my grandmother had stopped trying to enslave Sarah, Ammachi didn’t stop
complaining about her.
Others walked stealthily to the front of the house,
opened the squeaky gate gently and stepped out. We needn’t have worried. There
was shouting and a major commotion in the sitting room, with people banging the
connecting doors to the study and dining room. I knew the family would try to
get into the dining room through the kitchen via the store room.
When I saw a head bobbing into view through the window
near the front door, I began to run after my cousins. They were half way down
the road, walking to my great uncle’s house – my grandfather’s brother’s. I
wondered what his family would make of what had just happened.
I watched my cousins trying not to run. Suddenly I
didn’t feel alone. Now my cousins knew how I had felt for most of my vacation.
Bobby deserved what he got, but now we were in serious
shit.
******
* Grandfather in Malayalam
^ Grandmother in Malayalam
******
This is a continuation of The Webs We Weave (FC69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93) series and is about events that occur during the narrator's childhood family vacation in Kerala. Please note that this is a work of fiction.
Nice one! I wish they'd literally wiped the floor with him for the fresh filth he made.
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