All through the month leading up to the wedding, Kaveri consoled Meena. “Don’t worry about the village part, little one. You will not have to live in the village for long. Your husband is not interested in farming at all. He wants to be an officer. He wants to live in Kathmandu. Can you imagine,” she said, momentarily forgetting she was supposed to be comforting her daughter, “they don’t even have a video hall in that village, let alone a cinema hall. No electricity, no taps, only hand pumps, no roads, obviously. But their rice is fresher than fish,” she quickly added, “and their chicken younger than eggs. Eh? There is something to that or not? And they will dress you in silk and sleep you on mulmul. You should see the picture, how nicely round that Kumud is!”
“Nepal is like India, only,” said Kaveri, holding her daughter close.
“It is like another state in India. Now, if you go to Madras will you understand a word they say there? No. But you can go to Nepal and still understand what they are saying. It is like that. It is the same country, just two different names.”
And now the wedding was here already. Meena was to get married the next evening and it was the afternoon of the Mehendi. The barber’s wife, a 30-year-old woman who was much in demand during the wedding season, was in charge of Meena’s hair and her mehendi and she worked with slow meticulousness upon Meena’s feet, her fingers precise and steady, working the mehendi cone even as she chatted and gossiped. She scarcely raised her head to look at Meena, except when she needed rest.
Meena listened to the barber’s wife and watched the patterns unfurl upon her toes. Within her, Meena’s heart raced. The barber’s wife talked continuously, her speech changing rhythm with the patterns she drew. When Meena’s feet were done, the barber’s wife took a break to style her hair. Meena’s hair was long, touching her thighs, and the barber’s wife snipped off inches where some hair had split. “Split ends are nothing but bad luck,” the barber’s wife said in her throaty voice.
“There was this woman who got married without snipping the split ends and years later the husband found out she was not a woman at all! She was a chudail! A witch! They had to drown her in a river.” The next morning the barber’s wife would twist Meena’s hair into a high bun and put a garland of jasmines around it. Meena, the barber’s wife said, would make a very pretty bride. “You have nice big eyes,” she said, “like the actress’s, like Meena Kumari’s.”
By the time the barber’s wife started the mehendi on Meena’s palms the evening was already mature, and the barber’s wife fell into her own trance. It was with a glazed stupor that she spoke about marriage and mothers and motherlands with Meena. “What-what these men say,” she said, slowly shaking her head. “One can never change the mother and the motherland, they will say. Such nonsense. There is an incorruptible bond between child, mother, and motherland, they say, a loyalty that cannot be broken by will or act. Anything! My husband also lectures me sometimes” – and here she thickened her voice to mimic her husband – “‘The mother and the motherland are not like the arms or legs of a body, which when decayed can be amputated. The mother and the motherland are the hearts and livers of the body. They cannot be removed. The mother remains, and the motherland, too, in daylight and in darkness.’ Such babble of pearls fall from his toothless mouth. Just go and make some good money, old man, I say and push him away. But it feels like he has put stones on my chest when he talks this way. What is mother and motherland to a woman? They are impermanent dreams.”
Meena and the barber’s wife sat in the living room that had large windows on either side. Outside one set of windows was the balcony facing the inner courtyard, and outside the other window was the veranda facing the garden. On the veranda and in the courtyard were the men – Meena’s father, her uncles, her brother, her many male cousins. They were getting their hair cut and their heads massaged. Two large halogen lamps burned upon the veranda to aid the haircutter. Soon these men would become strangers to Meena. Soon one man, one husband, would replace all. Soon she would belong to some Manmohan and no longer belong to her brother, Suman. Soon her brother would marry someone, too, belong to another woman and no longer to his four sisters. Soon Meena would not be in this room, looking out at him. Meena looked away. The pattern of henna upon her palms and feet seemed to confine her. She could not eat by herself, nor could she push a strand of hair away from her face. She had to stay still to make sure the patterns on her palms did not smudge.
Everywhere around Meena there was sound, and every room in the house was fragranced with the aroma of henna paste kept ready for mehendi. Girls and women sat around mehendi artists to get their palms and feet patterned, but these women were not getting married the next day so it did not matter if their designs were not perfect. It did not matter if they decided not to decorate their feet or snip off their split ends. No bad luck would befall them. Carelessness would not lead to accidents in their lives.
In another room her father had set up a projector for the absolutely lazy, and Meena could hear Dharmendra romancing Rekha. Children with sticky hands and mouths ran circles in the house, buzzing like flies with the sweets they had eaten. The balcony was crowded with neighbours and guests, most drinking lassi and buttermilk and talking loudly. It was a warm evening and Meena’s blouse was damp with sweat. Older women sat in groups upon mats set throughout the house. They sang songs about marriage and sex. Kaveri was on the veranda, playing a dholak, and her cohort of singing friends were scolding the groom. This groom is too fat, they were singing. He will eat my daughter out of the house.
Oh, my daughter will suffer so
What a ravenous appetite!
Stop! Stop, you monstrous elephant
You hippopotamus mouth
You plump piglet
You swelling swine.
Oh, he will crush my delicate girl
Oh, how will she sleep?
Oh, she will say
Oh! Oh!
Excerpted with permission from The Woman Who Climbed Trees, Smriti Ravindra, HarperCollins India.