Tamarind Mem by Anita Rau Badami Read Free Book Online Page B

intensity tingled up my nostrils and bit at my eyes, pulling out tears. Linda Ayah seemed to feel the same way, for she gathered me into her hard, dry arms and rocked me, murmuring all the time, “Oh-oh-oh-oh, I know, I know.” Her breath, leafy with the smell of the
neem
twigs she used to brush her teeth, feathered my face, her hands gentle on my head. Ma bustled through the house filling it with such joy that I felt like sobbing. It was the kind of feelingI got when I ate jackfruit in my grandmother’s house. The garbage stink of the silky, gold fruit made me gag at the same moment as it slid down my throat, almost unbearably honeysweet.
    And as she moved briskly about the house, her starched cotton sari whispering about her body, her thin gold bangles tinkling, my mother reached into her memory and pulled out soft threads of song. They were mournful Saigal tunes, lilting Geetha Dutt lyrics, gentle songs from oldold movies which Ma had seen when she was a girl. Sometimes she kneeled before her carved elephant-box made of rosewood and ivory, her treasure-box, a wedding gift from Great-Aunt Manju, and drew out 75 rpm records in powdery paper jackets. Ma was in such a good mood when Dadda went away that she even let me try out her satin petticoats from the box.
    “See how thin I was!” she laughed
once.“Baap-re-baap!
Look at your mother now.” She made a circle with her fingers and said, “My waist was as tiny as this, not one chance that Scarlett O’Hara had next to
my
waist!”
    She allowed Roopa and me to open delicate silver tins still stained with turmeric and vermilion,
akshathey
and sandal paste from her wedding.
    “When you get married,” said Ma, “I will fill these boxes with joy, my blessings will perfume each of them.” She touched her wedding sari, a Benaras tissue of red and gold. “For you I will buy only Canjeevaram. A tissue is beautiful when it is new, but in a few years it is a pile of powder. Looklook how it crumbles and breaks!”
    “But Ma, I want a wedding sari just like this,” I begged, in love with the frail, whispery fabric like a butterfly’s wing.
    “Listen to me
chinni,
your mother knows what from what. Some things look better than they are,” said Ma.
    Hindi melodies from Mukesh movies streamed out of the bathroom along with the sound of rushing water as Ma washed her cascading black hair. She hummed in the bedroom, patted puffs of talcum powder under her arms, across her back, where sweat sprang and wet her Rubia blouse. She sang as she wrapped a rustling cotton sari around herself and then came out to dry her hair on the verandah, where the sun roared out of a blue, blue sky. I remember how she smiled at me upside down, through a flying sheet of hair, and I stared in awe at my luminous mother. Once, when she came out to the verandah, I was eating my breakfast, my mouth opening and closing as Linda Ayah spooned in
sooji-halwah
rich with raisins. When I saw Ma, I kicked my legs and pursed up my mouth, turning away from Linda’s coaxing.
    “Come on, Baby-missy, my
kanmani,
don’t you want to grow big-big?” wheedled Linda, her fingers hard on my chin trying to turn my puckered face towards her. But no, I wanted to go to my mother, so pretty and smiling. I climbed her fresh crackling lap, buried my face in the long neck and smelled her jasmine skin. I pushed my head between Ma’s breasts, wondering at the tender yielding beneath my face. Her chain of gold and black wedding beads pressed against my cheek, leaving tiny imprints. Gold for the good and black for the bad, Ma had explained. In a marriage you were obliged to live with both. Through the spiky fringe of my eyelashes, I could see the peacock eyes on Ma’s sari border, the fine brown hair on her arm, the two moles like flecks of coal-dust. I could hear her heart
ka-thump-a-thump,
the rumbleof her stomach. I held my own breath for a second and released it so that it matched the rise and fall of Ma’s breath. But I