Saree Read online

  CONTENTS

  Saraswati

  The Knot: Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1981

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  The First Drape: Nayaru Lagoon, Sri Lanka, 1982

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  The Pleats: Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India, 1983

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  The Second Drape: Mysore, Karnataka, India, 1989

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  The Fall: Mumbai, India, and Melbourne, Australia, 1997

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  The Finishing: Melbourne, Australia, 2010

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  The Wedding Season Excerpts

  About the Author

  In ever loving memory of my father, Piyadasa Dharmapala.

  I still miss you so very much.

  Saraswati

  There is a small park outside the town of Sirsa in Haryana, India. It is near the corner of the rough, dusty, potted road that forks off to Ottu. You might miss it. The turn-off for the park, that is. For that corner, shaded by a large banyan tree, has long been the haunt of the most impolitic of youthful gangs. Only this gang is slightly different to the Mafioso-style street-dweller you’d find in cities like Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata – for it is a gang of young male bulls.

  They are typical for Indian bovines, really: all angles, skin and bone. Their fine, almost fragile appearance belies their strength, agility and intelligence. They sit in the cool shade of the tree – mooing dispassionately, complaining of the poor quality of grass in the neighbouring fields, swatting flies way with a bored flick of the tail – waiting for their prey. A human in a hurry.

  All pretence of lethargy is abandoned, however, at the sight of their quarry: a bronzed, saree-swathed woman with a large bale of cotton precariously balanced on her too-delicate head and neck. They watch carefully. For it is easy enough to mistake the figure of a woman reflected in the waves of heat rising from the arid ground with those shadows cast by large, fluffy clouds overhead.

  It is the unmistakable tinkling of bells strapped to the ankles of field workers that gives the whole game away. The woman would know of the dangers posed by these militant bovines. Of course she would. Local legend would have warned her. But the rapidly sinking sun and the desperate need to deliver her load to the cotton depot a little way over the hill to earn a few meagre coppers to feed her hungry children would have strengthened her resolve. Maybe they won’t notice her. Maybe they won’t charge.

  As night will follow day, the herd allow the woman to go a few feet past the corner, lulling her into a false sense of security, just before the youngest gang member bellows out his war cry. And in a flash, they charge.

  The woman, clutching her precious load of cotton on her head, starts to run too. Maybe she’ll make it through the rapidly closing doors of the depot before the young bull impales her with his horns. Maybe she won’t, and her bale will be abandoned by the wayside as she saves her own life at the expense of her children’s empty bellies.

  So, if you are brave enough to out run these bullish thugs and drive past – fast – in your new Maruti, you may find the park.

  Once you get there, rest for a moment. Under the large kikar tree that stands guard like a sentinel to the west. Sit. Quieten your mind. Feel the pulsing of the mighty Saraswati River that once flowed all around. Tha thump. Tha thump. Tha thump. The rush of her flow that once brought wisdom and grace from the very roof of the world.

  Then open your eyes and look. Carefully. She hides among a clump of turmeric plants or maybe even among the foliage of a bhrami tree. A little statue. No higher than your waist. A holy remnant of the great Harappan civilisation that thrived in the surrounding Indus Valley some four millennia previously.

  She sits on a simple dais, a worn boulder acting as altar for the odd person who remembers she is still here and brings her an offering – Saraswati of the Sirsa Plains. The mother of the Vedas. She who needs no consort, for she is the one who is whole in and of herself.

  It is difficult to make out the detail, but she sits on a lotus in full bloom. Of the four arms she is usually depicted with, only two remain. One hand holds a lute, the other, papyrus, because Saraswati is the patron goddess of the arts, and of wisdom forever lost to antiquity.

  Of the remaining two hands, one lovingly caresses a peacock – the goddess’s totem animal and chariot. And the other hand – well, it is hard to say, but she holds out her arm like a weaver about to cast her first pass. Full of purpose and passion. For she is also the patron goddess of the weavers. Those who create something out of nothing.

  But there is intent in her eyes. What is she weaving? Who are the threads on her loom? Will she hide the main colours on the first pass, only to bring out beautiful patterns later? Or will she brutally cut those threads that serve ill and bring not joy? What is her design?

  Come now, let’s follow just a few of her threads as she weaves her endless saree of life, for we all start at one end and finish at another. We are all connected in this garment, threads on her celestial loom of humanity.

  The Knot

  Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1981

  No one had ever called Nila Mendis beautiful. That title belonged to her younger sister, Rupani, doe eyed and fair skinned – the jewel of her mother’s heart. Nobody had ever called Nila smart either. That was her elder brother Herath, who was studying to be an engineer at Colombo University. No one had even described her as vivacious – no, all ebullience had been inherited by her other brother, Manoj, who seemed to use his gifts down by the street corner swindling shopkeepers or flirting with the girls who attended the convent down the road.

  All earthly graces seemed to have escaped Nila’s inheritance. Aunties, uncles, grandparents, neighbours and even her own parents murmured complaints, behind smallish hands that could hardly muffle loud voices. ‘Oh, Nila,’ they despaired, ‘your parents simply don’t have the money for a big enough dowry!’

  Nila’s fate would have been thus sealed, had Mrs Helma Vasha, their elderly Burgher neighbour, not taken an interest in the young child, who was all too often fou
nd at the well, crying at the slights daily heaped on her head. ‘Come now, child, help me with my sewing,’ Mrs Vasha would say as she led a sobbing Nila away.

  By and by, the childless Mrs Vasha taught Nila everything she knew. She taught the young girl to sew by seaming saree remnants and offcuts. ‘Never waste, child, learn to darn and draw life together by the tiniest of threads.’

  She also taught Nila how to tat using a simple bobbin to make lace from hessian string taken from old gunnysacks. ‘It doesn’t matter what you start with,’ Mrs Vasha insisted. ‘It’s what you make of it.’

  Not that Nila’s mother appreciated the time the good lady spent with her daughter as the years flew by. ‘What good will sewing do her when she is married?’ Vera Mendis snapped at Mrs Vasha once Nila reached a marriageable age of twenty-two. ‘I’d rather she learn to spilt wood or shell coconuts. Looking the way she does, she cannot expect to find a rich husband who will let her spend her days making lace or decorating cushions!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how you dress a pig,’ her brother Manoj had jeered the day Nila wore a frock she’d made all by herself. ‘A pig is still a pig.’

  So Nila took her family quite by surprise that Thursday evening when she shuffled into the house holding her saree by bunching the yards of fabric together in her fists.

  ‘What? You? A job? Doing what?’ Manoj had asked incredulously, loungeing lazily on a planter’s chair.

  ‘It’s actually an apprenticeship,’ Nila called out as she dragged the tangled blue chiffon through the house, undoing the whole mess with relish in her room. ‘At a saree mill.’

  Unused to wearing saree for a full day, Nila had managed to step on her hem several times, despite Mrs Vasha’s expert pinning, and the whole thing had almost come apart on the train.

  ‘How did you get it?’

  ‘Mrs Vasha’s cousin has a friend at the mill,’ Nila replied coming back into the main room that served both as a living and dining room.

  ‘Shah! I didn’t know Mrs Vasha found jobs for people. Maybe I should ask her to find me a job!’ Manoj mocked. ‘So tell me, what kind of place is this? Is it a bunch of old hags sitting around weaving? You’ll fit right in!’ he laughed as Nila went over to open the ornate armoire in the corner next to the dining table.

  ‘They are all probably prettier than her,’ Rupani giggled nastily from her spot at the head of the table, before looking archly at Manoj, ‘but at least she’s got a job. Something you haven’t managed.’

  Manoj stood up abruptly to pull Rupani’s ear but was intercepted by their father, Mervan.

  ‘Rupani does have a point. What happened to that interview you went to at the port?’ Mervan asked, standing up to retie his threadbare sarong at his hips.

  ‘Shiva Dhanapalan, he was a year ahead of me at school, got it.’

  ‘Tamil?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about that job at the cement mercantile?’

  ‘It’s owned by a Tamil family and they don’t hire Sinhalese.’

  ‘This country is going to the dogs,’ Mervan observed sourly. ‘What about the job you went for at that rubber factory in Kurunagala? Have you heard back from them yet?’

  ‘The job was given to the son of one of their businessmen in town,’ Manoj replied glumly.

  ‘What are you looking for, girl?’ Vera asked Nila irritably when she moved aside the plate of dried fish Vera had been cleaning.

  ‘That tablecloth I made last year,’ Nila replied, setting down a stack of bedsheets and pillowslips.

  ‘The large one with the ribbon you threaded through the bottom edge?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I gave it to Rupani to make into a dress for temple. It’s far too large for our little dining table,’ Vera said offhandedly. Nila looked over at Rupani, who was indeed hemming a shapeless shift she’d fashioned from Nila’s work.

  ‘But Amma!’

  ‘Don’t you talk to me in that tone of voice!’

  ‘But Amma, I needed that tablecloth! They asked me to bring samples of my work on Monday!’

  ‘Why can’t you take the other things you’ve made?’

  ‘Like my blouse?’ Nila cried. ‘The one that Rupani accidentally poured tea all over the other day? Or the pillowcases that Manoj and Rupani used to catch fish down by the canal?’

  ‘No need to get angry with me! If that tablecloth was so valuable, you should have said.’

  Nila took a deep breath and sat down on the old mahogany chest by the doorway to the kitchen. ‘Can I please have some money for some cloth, then?’

  Vera grudgingly reached for the drawstring purse she kept tucked in the waistband of her underskirt.

  ‘Amma, the modalali told me to remind you that there’s still ten rupees outstanding from last month’s grocery account.’ Manoj stood abruptly with his hand outstretched to collect money for the local shopkeeper.

  ‘Give the man five rupees and tell him I will settle the rest by the end of month,’ Vera replied, rummaging for coins. As Manoj took off into the inky darkness, Nila knew he would not return till the early hours, half cut and reeking of beedee.

  ‘Amma, I need a rupee for that botany trip next week,’ Rupani piped up.

  With a sigh, Vera tipped what was left in her drawstring purse into Rupani’s outstretched hand as Nila’s heart sank.

  ‘Amma, what am I going to do?’ Nila asked.

  ‘How should I know? Maybe it’s better you didn’t go for this job at all!’ Vera growled. ‘Men don’t like marrying women who have worked!’

  Nila slumped on the old chest. This was always the way. She’d no sooner get an opportunity to escape her family than it was dashed away. Like the time she had been forced to miss her interview for teacher training college because she’d been needed to nurse Manoj through his first hangover.

  ‘You think only of yourself, Nila! Your brother is dying and you want to go to an interview!’ Vera had screamed.

  Then there had been the time Nila had been asked to accompany the elderly Mrs Gamage from across the street to India on a pilgrimage. The older lady had said that there would be several wealthy people on the pilgrimage too who were looking for permanent companions. Only no one had been able to find Nila’s birth certificate in time for the passport to be made. Several months later, Nila had found it among Rupani’s things.

  And just last month her mother had insisted she not accept a position as a trainee nurse at Colombo General Hospital.

  ‘No decent man will want to marry a woman who has already seen another man naked. It is not respectable!’ her mother had insisted.

  Nila was trapped between respectability and an urgent need for respite from her home and family. And a job at a saree mill had been perfect. No one could fault that. Sure, she could ask Mrs Vasha for the money, but the widow was barely making ends meet herself. Just the other day Nila had found out that the old woman been reduced to taking her heart medication every second day instead of the prescribed daily dosage.

  As she leant forward, holding her head in her hands, the lid of the chest she was sitting on creaked, sparking an errant thought into an idea. Nila jumped to her feet, threw open the lid and knelt down in front of the old box.

  ‘Have you gone mad, girl? There is nothing in there for you!’ Vera barked as Nila started to unpack the crockery.

  ‘Look at all that dust!’ Rupani sneezed as Nila sent clouds of it into the air.

  What Nila was looking for was at the bottom of the camphor-lined ark, in among the yards and yards of moth-eaten sarees put in to cushion the crockery from unexpected bumps.

  ‘Amma, may I have this?’ Nila triumphantly asked her mother, lifting an old white cotton cloth from the very bottom. It was a remnant left over from Rupani’s layette, fragranced with dried jasmine – six yards of soft, white, fluffy cotton fabric – so fine that it was transparent, yet strong.

  ‘Nila, this is old! Look – it’s covered in stains!’ Vera cried.

  ‘I will w
ork with what I have. May I have it?’

  ‘As you wish,’ Vera said – thinking Nila quite mad – as she went into the kitchen to see to the evening meal.

  The day was young and cool but the cloudless sky above held the promise of the searing heat to come. As Nila walked up from Panadura station to the saree mill along the river road, her arms throbbed with pain and her legs tingled with discomfort. She had been up at the crack of dawn to draw forty pails of water from the well behind the house to fill the earthen jars that provided water for her family. She’d only had a quarter of an hour to get ready before her two-hour journey from Kotahena on the north side of Colombo to the little seaside town of Panadura some twenty miles away to the south.

  Unused to wearing saree and without the help of Mrs Vasha so early in the morning, Nila had had to drape her saree herself. The result was poor, held together by innumerable pins, and she could barely take a step forward without tripping and falling. She had to kick the pleats out of the way as she walked so as not to step on them, which meant she wasn’t walking to the mill but rather shuffling along at pace.

  ‘Aiya, can you let me in? This is my first day,’ Nila said a little breathlessly to the watcher at the gates of the mill.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the man asked brusquely.

  ‘Nila Mendis.’

  The man tore his eyes away from the road to look Nila up and down with disdain before opening the large rusty gate. Nila paid him no mind – she was used to being dismissed for her dumpy figure, unfashionably dark skin and the odd-shaped eyes that sat on her face at angles to each other.

  The saree mill was a large old Dutch house built at the turn of the eighteenth century to house the visiting members of the van Rickles family, whose interests stretched from Persia to the Solomon Islands.

  Once the Dutch left Ceylon in 1802, the house had been taken over by an administrator from the British East India Trading Company, a perpetually sunburnt bachelor who felt more at ease with the natives than with his own kind. He preferred to catch the weekend packet to Ceylon than risk the matchmaking mamas of the Madras social circuit.

  Nadesan Nair, a shrewd young Tamil, often accompanied the memsahib to his island retreat in Ceylon. Nadesan had started working for the British man as a valet, but worked his way up to become his chief native clerk in the Madras. While the ageing trader saw peace and solitude in the river, and the estuary just beyond – both teeming with fish, crabs, prawns and the seabirds that preyed on them – Nadesan saw unbridled opportunity.