Relaxing in her easy chair in the front yard, Pankaja gazed at the pattern that the morning sun filtering in through the neem leaves cast at her feet. A few ripe neem fruits were scattered on the ground. Pigeons cooed from high above. Suddenly, a solitary crow cawed, shattering the peace of the moment. She wondered if a visitor would come. But the days when a cawing crow heralded the arrival of a guest were long gone.
The world had changed so much.
She stared at a neem fruit, bitter and yet healing. The neem tree with its serrated leaves and rough bark reminded her of her own life. Her journey had been marked by joy, grief, trust, betrayal, triumph, and tragedy. What was left was only bitterness, but this too was a flavour one could savour.
She had learned to relish the neem – healing old wounds, freshening foul air, and heralding with its delicate blooms a new year and new beginnings. She smiled at her own foolish hope. What new beginnings could she expect now save a painless and dignified end? For she had seen it all. And foreseen it all...
Smiling, she dozed off in the warmth of the morning sun.
The lamp flickered in the dark room. Lying on a worn mat on the floor, Pattamma heaved and groaned. Clenching her teeth to prevent herself from screaming, she pushed, as the contractions came one after the other in quick succession. The midwife held her head and said, “Push a little harder, it’s almost here.” Turning to the mother who was cringing in the dark, she muttered, “What misfortune for this cursed girl. Like a golden image. Her first born and she is a widow! It’s all Bhagvan’s maya. The fruit of her sins in the last life. Aiyyo, Rama!”
Pattamma screamed and pushed and the child’s head emerged. The midwife held the head and with one more push, the baby slipped into her hands. A beautiful boy. Big and fair. Snipping and binding his umbilical cord, she cooed and set him down on an old mat spread on the floor before attending to Pattamma.
Pressing out the afterbirth, she wrapped it in a banana leaf and placed it in a corner. She washed the child in lukewarm water, wrapped him in an old cloth and handed him to his grandmother. Muttering to herself, she started clearing the room in the dim light. “A first-born boy! If that mother hadn’t been
a wretched widow, she would have got a handsome gift.” Rajamma looked at the baby sadly, sighed and handed him to his mother.
Pattamma turned her face away and looked at the wall in the dimly-lit room. Stained and cracked, the wall was just like her life. Gazing at the child’s face, her dead husband’s face floated before her eyes. Middle-aged, paralysed from the waist downwards, he had suffered a heart attack when he heard his wife was pregnant.
He had simply died of shame. Pattamma’s father had fixed this match to an elderly wealthy man, thinking that if she bore him just one child, his beautiful daughter’s life would be secure. She would be spared the poverty and hunger that had dogged their lives all along. The acre of land they had was barely enough to survive on. But fate was cruel and the elderly son-in-law suffered a stroke. His large house in PR Square was filled with relatives and friends who flocked to visit him. They eyed the beautiful young bride, and sympathised with his plight.
Gradually, he grew worse and became completely bedridden. The spark of desire he had felt for his child-bride and the faint hope that her fresh, young blood would revive his worn-out body, remained unfulfilled.
In spite of his anxiety about her safety, he could do little to protect her from the vultures who circled his home. He would try to speak to her but his speech was slurred. At times, he grunted painfully, struggling to raise his hand and hold her. But both words and actions had been torn away from him by a cruel stroke of fate.
Pattamma waited on him cheerfully and patiently, never displaying any revulsion or hesitation at his pitiful condition. But barely 14, when his friends brushed up against her or looked at her with their heavy-lidded eyes, she was confused and aroused. This was a strange feeling. Her young body yearned for something. She sensed that this yearning was not a good thing, but she did not dare confide in her mother.
Soon, Rajamma left for Pondavakkam to attend to her field, leaving the coast clear for his friends to make their moves. And inevitably, one day, after having been pushed into a corner and handled roughly, but strangely excitingly, by one of his friends, Pattamma discovered a sheltered corner of the large house where her newly roused desires and yearning flesh could be satisfied by these hungry men. The problem, however, was managing them. Though young, she was proud and quick, and chose her lovers with care. They saw to it that she was safe from other predators.
There was one lawyer in particular, called Varadan (nickname: Papa), who was a self-appointed guardian of her virtue. When she was pregnant, he assumed that it was his child little knowing that there were at least three other men who could make the same assumption. To give the devil his due, Papa managed the whole tragedy of her husband’s heart attack with tact and discretion, not allowing a whisper of accusation or gossip to touch Pattamma.
Excerpted with permission from Pankaja, Vasantha Kannabiran, Speaking Tiger Books.
