16, Acceptance
Chapter 16 - Acceptance
Ravi never returned to his hut, except once, to collect a few precious mementoes of his previous life… a piece of carving in the shape of a peacock from the crown of his first tanpura (which he‘d smashed when he‘d first realised he had the disease), his comb and a pair of embroidered sandals I had given him that he could no longer wear (no toes to grip them with). He had kept them for years wrapped in cloth and tucked into the rafters of his hut. They still looked like new when he unwrapped them and showed them to Chitra. She put them on her own feet and they laughed - her small feet looked like a child’s in them. Ravi never had to go through the humiliation of begging again - he lived, shielded from the flinching gaze of the world behind the crumbling, carved screens of the big house, the two white cobras at the gate marking the boundaries of his world. And to Chitra, he was the world now. She no longer wandered the streets either, but spent all day and all night gazing at Ravi, at his eyes so full of expression, at his hair, so fine and dark and wavy, at his chest, so smooth and strong. Even at the poor foreshortened stubs of his fingers, the missing quarter of his face - though he hated her looking so she did it when he was asleep. And though it wrenched something inside her - with pity, with horror - when she saw this exposed portion of his skull, his mortality shoved forward before its time, she pressed her fingers to the side of her own face and thought about her own skull, which was right there grinning away inside her own skin, and she loved the broken parts of him too.
She gave birth to four children, first a round, bright eyed little girl - Seema, then two little boys who both died before they were a year old and then, a few years later, pale little Meera. Seema and Meera. One loud and rumbunctuous and full of mischief and one small and shy and prim.
Seema got along with everyone, she made them laugh and delighted them with her childish songs and antics. Ravi loved them both desperately, but Meera he loved with an intensity that sometimes caused him an actual pain. Her smallness, her frailness, her nervousness made him want to protect her from any pain or suffering, his precious little one. He would fuss over her if she fell and grazed her knee and she would weep inconsolably, outraged that she should have to feel this thing called pain. Seema, on the other hand seemed to feel no pain, and would pick herself up and dust herself off and carry on playing with blood seeping into her skirts, and later
Bimla would grumble, unable to wash the stains out. Ravi hated the fact that Chitra had resumed the trade of her mother. He sulked and quarrelled with her - having no answer to give her when she asked 'But what else do you suggest I do to earn a living?", afraid to voice the fact that if he had not had to become a beggar, he could have kept her. One afternoon, while making a point of going off to explore alone, he came across a storeroom at the back of the house full of musical instruments. His missing fingers itched again to play them, but he could not get a decent sound out of any of them. Then suddenly, in a plain wooden box, rusted with age, he found a strange, squat, three-stringed lute. Its neck was carved in the shape of a cobra, its head rearing over the top. To his delight, he found he only needed to touch it oh so gently with the pads of his hands and it would burst with song of such aching beauty that it almost made him weep and laugh at the same time. And as he played it, alone in the shadows of the abandoned store room, the realisation came to him that this had to be. It has to be. That it had been the calling of her mother, that it would be her calling, that it didn’t mean that she would love him any the less or that she would be any the less pure for him or precious to him. But more than this, as the room filled with the voice of the lute, he himself was filled with a conviction, an absolute conviction, that this had to be.
The reputation of the House, already established, grew to greater heights; the vibrant energy of the 'new' Chitra, who could twine around your body like a snake and make you feel like you were a youth again if you were old, or if you were a youth, make you feel like a god! And all the time, the soul-wrenchingly beautiful music that blew through the house like the wind off the sea. The early mutterings that there was no point in paying for something that so many had had for free in the gutters and behind the rubbish heaps of the town fell silent, the murmurings that it was neither healthy nor dignified to lie with the wife of a leper fell silent and strains of the lute grew stronger and sweeter, and the urges of the men of the town - and to be honest, some of the wealthier and more bored of the women too - to come and sample the wares of the house grew stronger. More and more customers came, and then more women arrived, wanting to be part of the glory of the House. Bimla and Chitra vetted them carefully to ensure that they held the same aesthetic values, the same sense of belonging to a noble tradition. There would be no coarse whoring in this house. Here everything was decorous and elegant and as it should be - everything keeping its rightful place in the Universe, and keeping in harmony with everything else in the Universe.
They were always particularly pleased when a girl came down from the forest. The forest women were sombre and quiet, they worked incredibly hard and - though they always seemed to carry a deep sorrow in their eyes - never seemed to lose their dignity or sense of self. But Ravi drew the line at letting their daughters have anything to do with this world - their mother’s trade may feed and clothe them, but he didn’t want them to be any part of it. He worried in particular about little Meera, with her thin, angular face and big serious eyes. Eyes that saw everything. Saw how her mother scrubbed and scrubbed at her body after an evening’s work. Saw how the ‘guests’ arrived all jumpy and alert, with a sliding, smirking look in their eyes (which frightened her) and left looking bleary and sated as though they had drunk poison (which disgusted and frightened her more). Her perpendicular little ears heard every grunt and gasp and moan, her narrow little nose wrinkled at every whiff of perfumed hair-oil and at the all too human muskiness that it was trying to mask. Chitra and Ravi were so focused on protecting Meera from the business of the house over the years, that they hadn’t noticed that Seema, now thirteen, was drawing the eyes of the men to her, winding their glances in on her little fingers, playing them out again with an expertise that came totally naturally to her, bouncing them off her hip, biting her lip. And clearly delighting in every minute of it, just as she delighted in her food and in her baths and in the luxury of someone combing coconut oil through her hair. And by some imperceptible process, Seema became part of it, she seemed always to have been part of it, as though she was born to it.
Ravi could see this and had to accept it, but he set his lips tightly together and refused to talk about it - this too, he supposed, had to be, though he didn‘t like it at all. Chitra and Bimla often had to chide Seema for not behaving in a manner quite dignified enough to suit the tone of the House, (singing a shade too loudly, showing a hint too much pleasure in her art, dressing a bit too racily…) but she attracted so many customers and seemed to take such enormous, voluptuous delight in her work that they didn’t have the heart to chide too sternly. So while Seema revelled in the sensuous glare of the public areas of the house, Meera skulked in the shadows, or locked herself away in her room where she had a stash of books. She was the only one in the family who had learned to read (Seema had been taught, but had never learned); Meera even learned to read English. Ravi was so proud of his little one’s cleverness and wished that his old mistress could see how wonderfully her granddaughter had turned out.
Meera loved losing herself in the alterative worlds the books whipped up around her - strange worlds where cold, soft ice feathers fell from the sky and pale skinned girls and boys drank exotic sounding drinks called 'ginger beer' and went on adventures without their parents, or ayahs or anyone. The girls and boys spoke with measured, politeness, with dignity which was not undermined by strange heaving noises and nasty smells and undercurrents of pungent, twisted, dangerous things... How nicely they spoke even when caught in dangerous situations with smugglers at their heels, they would run to the nice, policeman with kind blue eyes and say 'Please, sir, please, help me.' And then they would be safe and everything would be alright again.
When rumours started that a member of the royal family was interested in availing himself of the services of the House, Bimla almost wept with joy and pride and went around for days talking about “the old days” until everyone was sick of the sound of those words. He was the great nephew of the old maharajah, and though the British had taken away all the family’s power and most of their wealth, they had managed to tuck away enough cash, antiques and jewellery in a Swiss bank account to keep a couple of generations of them going in the luxury to which they had been accustomed. The princeling that eventually turned up one night, in a long, low, dark automobile with two friends, was a handsome youth, his ancestry glowed through his fine bone structure and his cool gaze - but there was something sallow about his skin, something shifty about the corners of his mouth. Nevertheless, they sat him down and brought him sherbets and a hookah, and played him music and had girls dance for him.
Meera, now eleven, watched it all in disgusted fascination from the safety of the shadows at the top of the stairs. Ravi watched it all in resignation from the shadows of the veranda where he sat and played his lute. But the prince didn’t like the look of any of the girls, he said. “Haven’t you got anything a little younger?” he said “Fresher?” Bimla and Chitra looked at each other dismayed, when Seema suddenly chirped up brightly. “I know, I'll go and get Meera, she‘s completely fresh!” Meera had heard these words, turned, run down the corridor, jumped into an old chest full of musty shawls and pulled the heavy lid over her. Chitra and Bimla both slapped Seema soundly - one on each side of her head, simultaneously - for making such a suggestion. “Oh for goodness, sake, it was just a joke!“ Seema had muttered, rolling her eyes and rubbing the sides of her head. Ravi stepped out of the shadows and stood defiantly between the rather unnerved prince and the foot of the stairs to protect his precious little one. He let the cloth fall away from his disintegrated face and felt a grim satisfaction as the prince shrunk away - too well bred to express his horror, but too shocked to hide it completely. They searched everywhere for Meera, all over the house, upstairs and downstairs and on the roof and in the veranda, swinging lanterns in the dark garden calling her name, just as Bimla had called Chitra’s name years before.
When they eventually found her, and reached their arms into the box to pull her out, Meera had screamed as though they were going to murder her and it took them a long time to convince her that they weren’t going to give her to the prince. “I promise you, my darling“ her mother had wept as she kissed her hair and stroked her arms and squeezed her to her chest, “I promise, I would never… never….!”
But she had lied, she had lied. Her mother, who was so big and clever and sensible, who was supposed to keep her safe, who Meera had trusted with her life... had lied.
Ravi never returned to his hut, except once, to collect a few precious mementoes of his previous life… a piece of carving in the shape of a peacock from the crown of his first tanpura (which he‘d smashed when he‘d first realised he had the disease), his comb and a pair of embroidered sandals I had given him that he could no longer wear (no toes to grip them with). He had kept them for years wrapped in cloth and tucked into the rafters of his hut. They still looked like new when he unwrapped them and showed them to Chitra. She put them on her own feet and they laughed - her small feet looked like a child’s in them. Ravi never had to go through the humiliation of begging again - he lived, shielded from the flinching gaze of the world behind the crumbling, carved screens of the big house, the two white cobras at the gate marking the boundaries of his world. And to Chitra, he was the world now. She no longer wandered the streets either, but spent all day and all night gazing at Ravi, at his eyes so full of expression, at his hair, so fine and dark and wavy, at his chest, so smooth and strong. Even at the poor foreshortened stubs of his fingers, the missing quarter of his face - though he hated her looking so she did it when he was asleep. And though it wrenched something inside her - with pity, with horror - when she saw this exposed portion of his skull, his mortality shoved forward before its time, she pressed her fingers to the side of her own face and thought about her own skull, which was right there grinning away inside her own skin, and she loved the broken parts of him too.
She gave birth to four children, first a round, bright eyed little girl - Seema, then two little boys who both died before they were a year old and then, a few years later, pale little Meera. Seema and Meera. One loud and rumbunctuous and full of mischief and one small and shy and prim.
Seema got along with everyone, she made them laugh and delighted them with her childish songs and antics. Ravi loved them both desperately, but Meera he loved with an intensity that sometimes caused him an actual pain. Her smallness, her frailness, her nervousness made him want to protect her from any pain or suffering, his precious little one. He would fuss over her if she fell and grazed her knee and she would weep inconsolably, outraged that she should have to feel this thing called pain. Seema, on the other hand seemed to feel no pain, and would pick herself up and dust herself off and carry on playing with blood seeping into her skirts, and later
Bimla would grumble, unable to wash the stains out. Ravi hated the fact that Chitra had resumed the trade of her mother. He sulked and quarrelled with her - having no answer to give her when she asked 'But what else do you suggest I do to earn a living?", afraid to voice the fact that if he had not had to become a beggar, he could have kept her. One afternoon, while making a point of going off to explore alone, he came across a storeroom at the back of the house full of musical instruments. His missing fingers itched again to play them, but he could not get a decent sound out of any of them. Then suddenly, in a plain wooden box, rusted with age, he found a strange, squat, three-stringed lute. Its neck was carved in the shape of a cobra, its head rearing over the top. To his delight, he found he only needed to touch it oh so gently with the pads of his hands and it would burst with song of such aching beauty that it almost made him weep and laugh at the same time. And as he played it, alone in the shadows of the abandoned store room, the realisation came to him that this had to be. It has to be. That it had been the calling of her mother, that it would be her calling, that it didn’t mean that she would love him any the less or that she would be any the less pure for him or precious to him. But more than this, as the room filled with the voice of the lute, he himself was filled with a conviction, an absolute conviction, that this had to be.
The reputation of the House, already established, grew to greater heights; the vibrant energy of the 'new' Chitra, who could twine around your body like a snake and make you feel like you were a youth again if you were old, or if you were a youth, make you feel like a god! And all the time, the soul-wrenchingly beautiful music that blew through the house like the wind off the sea. The early mutterings that there was no point in paying for something that so many had had for free in the gutters and behind the rubbish heaps of the town fell silent, the murmurings that it was neither healthy nor dignified to lie with the wife of a leper fell silent and strains of the lute grew stronger and sweeter, and the urges of the men of the town - and to be honest, some of the wealthier and more bored of the women too - to come and sample the wares of the house grew stronger. More and more customers came, and then more women arrived, wanting to be part of the glory of the House. Bimla and Chitra vetted them carefully to ensure that they held the same aesthetic values, the same sense of belonging to a noble tradition. There would be no coarse whoring in this house. Here everything was decorous and elegant and as it should be - everything keeping its rightful place in the Universe, and keeping in harmony with everything else in the Universe.
They were always particularly pleased when a girl came down from the forest. The forest women were sombre and quiet, they worked incredibly hard and - though they always seemed to carry a deep sorrow in their eyes - never seemed to lose their dignity or sense of self. But Ravi drew the line at letting their daughters have anything to do with this world - their mother’s trade may feed and clothe them, but he didn’t want them to be any part of it. He worried in particular about little Meera, with her thin, angular face and big serious eyes. Eyes that saw everything. Saw how her mother scrubbed and scrubbed at her body after an evening’s work. Saw how the ‘guests’ arrived all jumpy and alert, with a sliding, smirking look in their eyes (which frightened her) and left looking bleary and sated as though they had drunk poison (which disgusted and frightened her more). Her perpendicular little ears heard every grunt and gasp and moan, her narrow little nose wrinkled at every whiff of perfumed hair-oil and at the all too human muskiness that it was trying to mask. Chitra and Ravi were so focused on protecting Meera from the business of the house over the years, that they hadn’t noticed that Seema, now thirteen, was drawing the eyes of the men to her, winding their glances in on her little fingers, playing them out again with an expertise that came totally naturally to her, bouncing them off her hip, biting her lip. And clearly delighting in every minute of it, just as she delighted in her food and in her baths and in the luxury of someone combing coconut oil through her hair. And by some imperceptible process, Seema became part of it, she seemed always to have been part of it, as though she was born to it.
Ravi could see this and had to accept it, but he set his lips tightly together and refused to talk about it - this too, he supposed, had to be, though he didn‘t like it at all. Chitra and Bimla often had to chide Seema for not behaving in a manner quite dignified enough to suit the tone of the House, (singing a shade too loudly, showing a hint too much pleasure in her art, dressing a bit too racily…) but she attracted so many customers and seemed to take such enormous, voluptuous delight in her work that they didn’t have the heart to chide too sternly. So while Seema revelled in the sensuous glare of the public areas of the house, Meera skulked in the shadows, or locked herself away in her room where she had a stash of books. She was the only one in the family who had learned to read (Seema had been taught, but had never learned); Meera even learned to read English. Ravi was so proud of his little one’s cleverness and wished that his old mistress could see how wonderfully her granddaughter had turned out.
Meera loved losing herself in the alterative worlds the books whipped up around her - strange worlds where cold, soft ice feathers fell from the sky and pale skinned girls and boys drank exotic sounding drinks called 'ginger beer' and went on adventures without their parents, or ayahs or anyone. The girls and boys spoke with measured, politeness, with dignity which was not undermined by strange heaving noises and nasty smells and undercurrents of pungent, twisted, dangerous things... How nicely they spoke even when caught in dangerous situations with smugglers at their heels, they would run to the nice, policeman with kind blue eyes and say 'Please, sir, please, help me.' And then they would be safe and everything would be alright again.
When rumours started that a member of the royal family was interested in availing himself of the services of the House, Bimla almost wept with joy and pride and went around for days talking about “the old days” until everyone was sick of the sound of those words. He was the great nephew of the old maharajah, and though the British had taken away all the family’s power and most of their wealth, they had managed to tuck away enough cash, antiques and jewellery in a Swiss bank account to keep a couple of generations of them going in the luxury to which they had been accustomed. The princeling that eventually turned up one night, in a long, low, dark automobile with two friends, was a handsome youth, his ancestry glowed through his fine bone structure and his cool gaze - but there was something sallow about his skin, something shifty about the corners of his mouth. Nevertheless, they sat him down and brought him sherbets and a hookah, and played him music and had girls dance for him.
Meera, now eleven, watched it all in disgusted fascination from the safety of the shadows at the top of the stairs. Ravi watched it all in resignation from the shadows of the veranda where he sat and played his lute. But the prince didn’t like the look of any of the girls, he said. “Haven’t you got anything a little younger?” he said “Fresher?” Bimla and Chitra looked at each other dismayed, when Seema suddenly chirped up brightly. “I know, I'll go and get Meera, she‘s completely fresh!” Meera had heard these words, turned, run down the corridor, jumped into an old chest full of musty shawls and pulled the heavy lid over her. Chitra and Bimla both slapped Seema soundly - one on each side of her head, simultaneously - for making such a suggestion. “Oh for goodness, sake, it was just a joke!“ Seema had muttered, rolling her eyes and rubbing the sides of her head. Ravi stepped out of the shadows and stood defiantly between the rather unnerved prince and the foot of the stairs to protect his precious little one. He let the cloth fall away from his disintegrated face and felt a grim satisfaction as the prince shrunk away - too well bred to express his horror, but too shocked to hide it completely. They searched everywhere for Meera, all over the house, upstairs and downstairs and on the roof and in the veranda, swinging lanterns in the dark garden calling her name, just as Bimla had called Chitra’s name years before.
When they eventually found her, and reached their arms into the box to pull her out, Meera had screamed as though they were going to murder her and it took them a long time to convince her that they weren’t going to give her to the prince. “I promise you, my darling“ her mother had wept as she kissed her hair and stroked her arms and squeezed her to her chest, “I promise, I would never… never….!”
But she had lied, she had lied. Her mother, who was so big and clever and sensible, who was supposed to keep her safe, who Meera had trusted with her life... had lied.
posted by Sabita Banerji at 4:42 am
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