The Silent Raga Read online

  THE SILENT RAGA

  DOUGLAS & MCINTYRE

  D&M PUBLISHERS INC.

  Vancouver/Toronto/Berkeley

  Copyright © 2007 by Ameen Merchant

  First paperback edition 2009

  First U.S. edition 2009

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Douglas & McIntyre

  An imprint of D&M Publishers Inc.

  2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201

  Vancouver BC Canada V5T 4S7

  www.dmpibooks.com

  Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  ISBN 978-1-55365-309-7 (cloth) ·

  ISBN 978-1-55365-405-6 (paper)

  ISBN 978-1-926685-85-4 (ebook)

  Editing by Steven Beattie

  Cover design by Jessica Sullivan

  We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

  For Ma Parin

  And for Madras

  We shall not cease from exploration

  And the end of all our exploring

  Will be to arrive where we started

  And know the place for the first time.

  Four Quartets, T.S. ELIOT

  A work of art is a corner

  of creation seen through a temperament.

  “Salon of 1866,” EMILE ZOLA

  THE SILENT RAGA

  Contents

  Varnam

  Alaapana

  Krithi

  Ragam Thaanam Pallavi

  Padham

  Thillaana

  Mangalam

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Varnam

  A drawing out of the colour of a raga or scale

  IF I COULD return to that time, I would choose the mornings.

  Especially the mornings after my mother’s death, when my days began very early. In fact, to the short, piercing whistle of the Rockfort Express at four. Sometimes I would already be up, drawing water from the well at the back of the house, and I would hear it call. My body would go still for a few seconds. The bucket would shake and splatter as I hesitated in midreach for the handle. It would slip halfway into the well again, completely drenching my dhavani and blouse.

  At that time of morning, when the crows and mynahs and parrots were still nursing their voices and not a single light shone in any of the neighbourhood houses, in that deep starlit darkness, the solitary cry of the train was a despairing call. A strange music.

  I would feel the cool morning air against my wet skin, and then a quick, feathery warmth would spread through me, as though someone had rubbed eucalyptus oil all over my skin.

  I wonder now if Amma thought of it in those terms. Did she even hear the train as it rumbled by only five miles away?

  With the bucket of water in one hand I would grab the broom and the kolapodi tin with the other and walk around to the front of the house. I would sweep up the dried leaves and dust from the path leading to the front door, scoop it neatly into the pan and empty it into the big, rusty metal bin beside the gate. Then I would moisten the ground with fresh, cold water sprinkled from my cupped palm and level it smooth.

  The kolam I designed would depend on how I felt that particular day. On some mornings it was an elaborate welcome to dawn, ambitious and full of snaking grandeur, and my hands would weave a tapestry of blooming flowers and intertwined stars. I would grab fists full of kolapodi—one, two, three, even four sometimes—and pour my heart into my masterpiece, my sublime welcome mat to the sun. And on other days it was a hurried note of dots and curves—a snappy, perfunctory kiss of cordiality—achieved with just half the amount of powder.

  I have not dipped my hands in kolapodi for many years. I can’t say I miss the grainy feel of powdered rice and white rock on my fingers.

  I am no longer a prisoner of pattern.

  THE WALK TO the milk depot, with my ears tuned to the glassy murmurings of the previous day’s bottles in the jute bag, was the dreamiest part of those mornings.

  I would put on a dry dhavani, fling Amma’s maroon shawl over my body and, quietly, with my teeth on my tongue, tiptoe my way through the hall to reach the front door. I would pull the bolt down without a sound and let myself out, like a fleeing ghost. Once outside, I would lock the door behind me, carefully skirt my kolam art for the day and step out the gate.

  It was a good fifteen-minute walk to the milk depot, and I would take my own time getting there, stretching those quiet minutes for as long as I could. The tamarind and asoka leaves shimmied and danced in the breeze, and the heady fragrance from the parijatha blossoms filled the air.

  Breathe it all in, Janaki. Breathe it all in while you can, I would tell myself, as I filled my lungs with air, as though the perfume were some kind of anaesthetic, a divine drug that would numb me through the predestined drudgery of my day. Occasionally, a cyclist would ride by with a stack of Dina Thandi newspapers tied to a wobbly carrier behind the seat. The tinny bell on the handlebar would protest in sharp, shrill notes as the cycle bumped and balanced on the red-earth road. I couldn’t have known then that I would make the headline of that newspaper for three days in a row. I had never craved such a populist rebellion.

  Cutting across C Block, I would take the route along the temple tank. As I walked along the eastern bank, I would hear the priest recite shivery Sanskrit slokas while he dipped in the tank and performed his cleansing ritual before the morning puja. I would tighten my grip around the bag with the milk bottles, abruptly cutting off their delicate endearments, and quickly walk away from his sight in the direction of the main road.

  When I turned the corner, the neon sign of Mahalaxmi Talkies, half fused and flickering, would come into view. Even from where I was, I would see the figure of the night watchman stretched out like a corpse under the hazy fluorescence of the stills showcase.

  In the month of Margazhi a group of vagrants and urchins sought warmth around the noxious vapours of a burning car tire or some plastic garlands snatched off the nearby cinema banner. I would avoid them and walk on the opposite footpath. I would quicken my pace to the milk depot, clutching the four cards for four bottles tightly in my left hand under the shawl. I would dart across the junction of the main roads, pass the Gandhi statue stippled with bird droppings and finally reach my destination.

  Kamala from C Block, Revathi from B Block and a few other mamis from houses outside the agraharam colony would arrive around the same time as I. We would arrange ourselves in a single line along the milk co-op kiosk and exaggerate the effect of the morning chill as we waited for the delivery van to pull up. Sometimes, Revathi, who had a voice like a river of honey, would sing an alaapana of abstract notes:

  Ga–Ma

  Ga–Ma–Da–Ma

  Ga–Ma

  Ga–Ma–Ni–Da–Ma–Da

  Ma–Da–Ni–Sa–Da

  Ni–Ni–Ni–Ni

  Kamala and I would take this to be our cue and quickly join in:

  Ga–Ma–Da–Da–Da–Da

  Ma–Da–Ni–Ni–Ni–Ni

  Ma–Da–Ni–Ni–Ni–Ni

  Our voices would float in the mist-cloaked landscape, and little beads of water would creep around the corners of our eyes. We knew the milk van would be there in less than ten minutes. At
the latest, by five thirty. And then it would all be over. That hour of girlhood innocence, those moments of rationed independence.

  Alaapana

  The abstract “scope” of a raga, or the short, nonmetric (nonrhythmic) prelude

  MAY 1991

  MALLIKA PAUSES at the door and casts one last look at her office.

  Everything is in place. The fax machine is buzzing, and there will be reams and reams of messages by Monday. The files are locked. She makes a mental note to remember to bring some tea water for the money plant that sits facing the sun on the window, overlooking the Gemini Flyover. Funny name, she muses, flicking the switch. Money plant.

  It is quiet down the corridor, a carpeted, air-conditioned hush. She has met scores of students yearning for such luxuries. Charmed by a humming foreignness. Why does it tug, this desire to be someone else, to escape into the possibility of other beings, other guises? Is it envy, she wonders, or is it something else? Did she, in a still-lost consciousness, really begrudge Janaki for following her heart? Did she resent her sister’s sudden fame, and her dignity through it all? Lately, she thinks she hears Janaki inside her body, like a voice from somewhere else, far away, forgotten but always heard.

  “She… could have… killed us instead!” Appa told the journalists that day, and the newspapers had added three exclamation marks of their own. He said it with some disbelief, as if he saw the hollowness of such a statement halfway through its utterance but was compelled to finish. He pleaded, “Please let us keep our dignity.”

  And Janaki kept her distance. She had never been in touch.

  But now she was coming back. The reverse of exorcism. A ghost not freed, but forced back into you. Foreign even to priests.

  The lights are out in all the cubicles, and everybody is gone for the day. Even Ted Pope, who normally worked late, wasn’t around. She had had such a hard time getting through to Berkeley. The fax machine on the other end was constantly busy, and she had forty test scores to send. It had swallowed time. Where did the day go? Mallika wonders, pushing the button for the elevator. I am a woman caught between two worlds in two words—Janaki Asgar.

  Mallika reaches into her handbag and runs her fingers over the envelope. She feels the torn edges of the glue-strip. A jagged journey into the past, she mutters as she waits for the elevator on the second floor. When she presses M, the steel doors slide like giant razor blades, and she faces herself in the reflection. The image is blurred, yet distinguishable, five foot seven, green cotton sari and a metallic sheen for skin. Once again, another deeper silence envelops her, and the elevator begins to descend. She feels like somebody else.

  Dear Mallika, Janaki had written.

  I know this letter will take you by great surprise. It has been so long. I only hope it gets to you. I will be in Madras late 20 May. I will be staying at the Hotel Connemara. Could we meet on the morning of 21, if you are free? We can have breakfast together. Say, around nine, nine thirty? I will wait for you. We don’t have to tell Appa about this.

  Akka.

  Why was Janaki coming back? Why now, after all these years? The letter had arrived two days earlier at the United States Information Service, Madras, where she worked. Mallika Venkatakrishnan, Programs Counsellor, her card read, making her job seem important and glamorous when it was really not as important as it would have you believe. For five and a half days a week she sat swivel-chaired in an air-conditioned office on the second floor, interviewing and advising upper-middle-class boys and girls from the aºuent neighbourhoods of Boat Club Road and Wallace Garden. Twenty-year-olds who had already begun living their 101 per cent American lives across the seas in Toledo and Syracuse. You could see it in their eyes—and in their easy nonchalance—that they were walking through the early golden rustle of “fall,” wearing bright Benetton sweaters and chatting in lispy accents. Their ears—you could tell—already tuned to the distant crunch of maple and walnut under their feet, even in the blazing bazaars of T. Nagar. What could she tell them? Don’t go?

  At times Mallika found it hard to stifle a laugh and keep her composure in the presence of such wishful eagerness.

  She remembers the student from last week. When she asked him, “Why do you think American business schools are better than our very own in Ahmedabad and Calcutta?” he’d shrugged and said, “Maybe they’re all the same. But what’s so good about staying in this country? Have you read the newspapers lately?” She was stung by his response and terminated the interview soon after that with, “Please let me know where you would like me to send your GRE and GMAT scores as soon as you make up your mind.”

  Later that night, after that new girl—Rita de Something (why did she wear so much lipstick?)—had wrapped up the news for the day on TV, Mallika felt like calling him for a delayed rejoinder. A cutting sliver of righteous indignation, delivered in a calm and confident voice, “Mr. Vidyasagar, staying means that you have not forsaken!” But she didn’t. She always found it hard to let go.

  Now Janaki, the proverbial prodigal daughter and runaway sister—the good-at-everything Janaki, the Janaki who played the veena like a goddess, Janaki the Brahmin girl who made them the topic of national dailies—was coming back. Why?

  Mallika remembers journalists at the door the morning after Janaki left. That day of a hundred flashbulbs. How quickly the news had spread. How rapidly their lives became fodder for speculation and tabloid sensationalism. Names of shame on a million tongues. A cobra in full-hooded sway the moment the basket lid was lifted. All the way from the Brahmin agraharam where the mamis in their nine-yard cotton lengths wove fictions around the original incident, and right down to the corner shop next to Mahalaxmi Talkies that sold bananas and cigarettes. A scandal even autorickshaw drivers and construction workers chewed on and spat out in all its betel-nut redness, rude and stark on the nearby white wall. That same Janaki, she who was responsible for a deep burn scar the size of a fifty-paise coin in the middle of Appa’s palm and a sulphurous smudge on their souls, was coming back.

  Janaki still cannot write a straight line, Mallika thought and smiled. Even those few lines went slanting down the bleached blue paper, as though the loopy script of the language were pulling the sentences into a slow and inevitable spiral to the edge. Appa had bought her so many writing exercise books, hoping that her hand would eventually improve, and still the moment Janaki put pen to a blank sheet of paper, something instinctively changed in the spirit of her hand. Her fingers became giddy with the sense of expanse, and the pen danced free from lines and structures.

  Janaki had cut loose in her mind long before she actually left the agraharam.

  And that other letter, the goodbye-girl one, left between Leo Coffee packets in the kitchen cabinet ten years ago (her choice of place a perfect example of her innate ingenuity), had had the same mocking exuberance about it. You had to follow the lines on the page as they dipped, and curved, and then rose again in what was the shortest proclamation of liberty Mallika had ever read.

  THE ELEVATOR DOORS have parted. Down the hallway Mallika hears Gopalan, the security guard, and the buzzy static of his walkie-talkie.

  “All okay, madam?”

  “Yes, fine, Gopalan,” she says, touching her employee identification tag. “I didn’t realize it was so late. What time is it?” she asks casually, as though the elevator had only just brought her down.

  Gopalan points his torchlight beam directly onto his wristwatch dial. “Six fifteen, madam.”

  Mallika begins to walk down the corridor to the security booth, where she surrenders her tag and signs out the time she leaves the building. Gopalan follows a step behind her. In the well-lit foyer she can see a few people hurriedly disappearing down the basement stairs to the auditorium.

  “Is there some function, Gopalan?”

  “Yes, madam. I will give you the information in one second. They are showing American pictures.” He takes her badge and turns the sign-out sheet so that it faces her. “Mallika Venkatakrishnan.” It takes u
p the whole column.

  Janaki Asgar, she says to herself, feeling the vowels roll. Ja-na-ki As-gar.

  “You are having no interest in American cinema, madam?” Gopalan asks as he produces a brochure from under the desk.

  “No, Gopalan, I don’t see too many pictures. No American, no Tamil,” Mallika replies, and for a moment Mrs. Emanuel appears before her eyes. “Nothing can surpass the pleasure of a good book!” Mrs. Emanuel says, holding a copy of Wuthering Heights. “Why watch, when you can imagine?” We all have our own secret escapes, Mallika thinks. Hers was English literature. Janaki loved the cinema. Stasis and movement. Is that why it all happened? Was it in Janaki’s nature?

  Mallika glances over the program. “USIS (Madras) presents Feminism and Film: The New Women of America,” followed by a list of names:

  Annie Hall

  Norma Rae

  Julia

  Frances

  Silkwood

  Janaki Doesn’t Live Here Anymore…

  “Can I ask one thing, madam?” Gopalan is intent on making conversation.

  “Yes, Gopalan?” Mallika replies, trying to look attentive. It is getting very dark outside; the buses will be packed.

  “What is it, ma, this craze for America? From two in the morning peoples are queuing for visa, you know?” he says, his voice matching the incredulity in his expression. “Is it really very fine country?”

  Mallika knows about the queues that wind around the immigration and visa section of the building. They begin at the tip of the flyover and run along the compound wall of Church Park Convent. Everybody, she has heard, arrives with mats and pillows and Thermos bottles filled with chai and coffee. Two in the morning, and a community evolves on the footpath of Mount Road. She has only met students, but she knows that all visa applicants are thrown together in the draw for interviews. And an interview was no guarantee of a ticket to the golden shores of the USA. Only the screening officer has the power to make that a possibility. The expatriate god from the land of milk and honey.