Caribbean Moon, Indian Bride--Part Eleven

 Contact Author at guyind@rcn.com

Click Here for Beginning of Story 

Continued from Part Ten

When Arkah heard Morris’s story about Savita, softness and sympathy clouded his eyes. He said to Morris, “Can I help her in any way, like giving her some money?”

Morris bared his teeth like an enraged jaguar. “What? What is the matter with you, Ark?”

Arkah threw back his arms on the sofa. “We had nice times, you know. She was the woman who had given me the first taste of life. . . ” He trailed out into silence, memories inundating him. The day when Bansi had asked him to go to Redeemer Corner to buy a second-hand Ferguson tractor came back to him, Redeemer Corner a village on the Essequibo Coast. Eager to accomplish Bansi’s request, he crossed to Rika and boarded the steamer, Toucan, choosing a seat at the stern on the second storey.

When the steamer blew its signal for departure, a teenage girl in a pink dress came and perched on a stool six yards away from him. She seemed to be immersed in her own world, her face sombre yet beautiful with bright eyes. Arkah wondered whether she was Portuguese but her thick black hair, neat cheek bones, and full lips made her a facsimile of the Sindhi actress Sadhana. Yet, her body, slim and lithe, would say she had a yearn to be like Aubrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.

She looked prettier when the wind dispersed her hair. Arkah wanted to say something to start a conversation, but when he saw the cross look in her eyes, he averted his eyes and pretended study of the aftermath streams, swirls, and ruffles of the vessel’s propellers. He loved to sit here and watch the steamer moving between the islands of the Essequibo River, leaping waves yielding to placid streams, mud-coloured water becoming coffee-hued, sun-capped furrows melting to gleaming fleeces.

Soon the sun disappeared, the steamer lights came on, and the wind blew harder. The Sadhana-like girl took out her make-up kit from her handbag and powdered her face, brightened her lipstick, and darkened her eyelash. Arkah watched her with covert eyes through the gaps of his fingers. She was a beauty any man would want to gaze at.

The ship made a sudden swerve and rendered its stern to a squall that had been developing, blowing up the hem of the girl’s dress. Trying to cover her legs back, her handbag fell out of her hand, papers and notes flying out of it. Anguish, distress, and desperation seized  her face when she saw twenty-dollar notes fluttering out of her bag and whirling and zooming toward the bars of the rail to seek freedom in the river. She could not go after them since her hands had to stay on her dress.

Seeing her plight, Arkah rose and scrambled for the notes. He retrieved all except one that had flown over his head and wheeled into the sky like a kite losing its twine.

He led her to the cabin, where the wind could not assail them. Torn between relief and affliction, she stared at him speechless, her eyes and throat rolling. He put the notes back in her bag and dropped himself on a stool. She, too, flung herself on a stool, glowed in silence for a while, and said, “You save all the money me work foh three month.”

His forehead furrowed. “You earn a lot. What work you do?”

            “A floral designer.”

           

            “Then you’re a celebrity.”

            “Me is not a celebrity. A celebrity not going to work hard like me foh the little me get.”

            “The little you get?”

She smiled wryly. "You think me has a golden spoon in me mouth, eh?"

            “You have more than a golden spoon. You have diamond stars in your eyes.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Me accustom to sweet talk like that, you know.”

            “I can see that.”

            “You belong to Essequibo Coast?”

            “No. Hoogenheim Island.”

Excitement twinkled in her eyes. “Me hear that down there have plenty ah flowers.”

He shook with reproach. “Flowers? The only good thing you can see in my island is flowers?”

She sucked her teeth and shot him a look of equal reproach. “Why does many men always jumps back when they hears woman talking about flowers?”

            “But Hoogenheim has better things than flowers to ask about.”

She clasped her lips in assertiveness. “Me is a floral designer, you know.”

            “Oh,” he said, sinking into conjecture. Perhaps, he thought, that the flying twenty-dollar notes had a connection to her floral design sales. And though he had no interest in her work, only a yearning to hear her speak, he asked her about the things she made. Her eyes luminous with pride, her fingers fluttering, she embarked on a dense lecture on vertical, crescent, and oval arrangements. Then, after explaining how she would make her designs with foam, glue, pins and sprays, she sank into a gloomy exposition of bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages, and centre pieces.

Arkah restrained a yawn, feigned enthusiasm, waiting his moment to drop anchor and fish in her beauty.

            “What village you live?” she asked.

He told her, his mind severed from his words, his thoughts wandering into a realm of topaz feelings; and she, a crystal galaxy, raining down on him a medley of splendours. Her face, hands, tresses, lips, the heavenly lakes in her eyes, the angel swans swimming in them, lulled him into a world of India and more than India. She charmed him into a garden where the film world of Bombay transcended squalor, poverty and disease to express ecstasies caressing fairies of Indra’s celestial raaj. From their lyrics, music, poise, colours, and dances, mortals like Madhubala, Nimmi, Nargis, Waheeda Rehman, Sadhana, Saira Banu, Mala Sinha, Meena Kumari, Geeta Bali and Viyanthimala would shed their frailties, platitudes, and blemishes to blossom into immortals like Urvasi, Sabz Pari, Menaka, Rambha, Tilottama, and Laal Pari. Beneath the histories, lamentations, and tyrannies of India, the earth would quake and open to spout founts of iridescence to adorn constellations with imageries in Vedic, Puranic, Persian, and modern poems. The movie world, then, would create parallel heavens of Krishna dancing with Radha in peacock gardens, of Shiva sitting in trance on cloud-kissed mountains, of chandani-bedecked Sita blushing before Shri Raam, of Shah Jahan pouring love to Mumtaz Mahal. For Arkah and the islanders, movies like Aan, Arzoo, Sangam, Guide, and Milan would drop upon them like soft rain then harden into permanent jewels that would never crumble into transitory dreams. In their sundering from India, whatever beauty or symphony they drank from the silver screen would become the corpuscles of their real world to combat miseries of rice fields, cow pastures, and the sudden blow of fate. Now the Sadhana-like woman had awakened in Arkah the golden spirit of India created by writers, lyricists, actors, musicians, and directors.

            “Me name Savita,” she told him.

            “Oh,” he said, and told her his name.

She dropped her eyelids and put a hand to her chin. “Does the place you live get plenty flowers?”

Ruffled by her question, he swallowed a lump of air. Then trying to find something to say, he said, “Yes.”

            “Which part?”

He felt his stomach gurgling, his mind blank. Then something occurred to him. “Oh, we have a place called Kumbha Pasture.”

She stared at him, questions simmering in her eyes. “Kumbha Pasture?”

He nodded and told her that Kumbha Pasture was a ten-acre plot of land taken up by ponds, trees, and clusters of wild flowers. When Mohan and Sunaina, Arkah’s great grandparents, died, Murli, Arkah’s grandfather, buried them on the bank of a pond overhung by bamboo trees. To keep a connection with India, he engraved the word “Kumbha” in Devanagari script around the tombs then planted marigold flowers on the lines to define the letter. Later, when Murli and his wife Soorsati died, Bansi buried them on the bank of another pond and planted oleander flowers around their tombs to shape the words “Prayag,” “Haridwar,” “Ujjain,” and “Nashik.” Bansi added more to this when Rajni his wife died. He buried her under a gular tree, planted flamboyant, frangipani and poui trees around the grave, then had constructed a mausoleum of statuettes telling the story of Kumbha Mela, a story of the danavas and devtas churning the mythological ocean of milk for nectar. When they finished the churning, they put the nectar in a kumbha, a pot. To defeat the danavas, the devtas stole the pot and hid it in four places—Prayag, Haridwar, Ujjain, and Nashik. Whatever Bansi had in mind to connect this place with the sanctity of the Puranas and the festivities of India did not manifest as he had wanted. Fishermen would go there at night to catch fish in the ponds; hunters to trap their best iguanas; lovers to have their best times; boys to plunder the fruit trees. To protect the place from sacrilege, he built a troolie-thatched green heart house near the place and put a man Whisker and his wife Sussil to live in it to keep watch. After a year, Sussil told Whisker she could live there no longer because she was hearing strange voices in the trees. So they left, and Bansi gave up the idea of fulfilling a dream of grandiloquence to celebrate good over evil and the celestials’ gift of nectar to humans.

Savita put her palms to her mouth. “My God! What a place is that! The house is still there, nah?”

Arkah nodded. “In very good condition.”

When the steamer reached Adventure stelling, they exchanged addresses, promising to write each other. Arkah stared at her, a string humming inside him, as she boarded a bus. Seeing the look of loss in his face, she kissed her palm and fluttered her fingers. The string hummed louder inside him, and he felt that his destiny had made a turn.

He waited for two weeks then wrote her a long letter describing flowers in Kumbha Pasture and thanking her for igniting his interest in floral design. He told her that he had even started making corsages. She wrote back and said that she would love to come to Bundarie Square to collect flowers and teach him the finer techniques in her work. After an exchange of ten letters, she had made up her mind to come and live in the Whisker’s abandoned house. Excited, Arkah employed carpenters to repair the house then furnished it with things to make her comfortable.

She liked the house, moreover its location on the rim of Kumbha Pasture, the tall trees around her, birds singing, fragrance from flowers, and the wind trilling in the leaves. At night Arkah would keep her company until she was ready to go to bed. They talked about many things, about movies they saw, about books they read, about their families.

            “You know,” she told him. “You must be wondering what kind ah loose parents me have, to let me come here all by meself.”

            “I don’t care.”

She smiled and tapped his chin with a finger. “You only say so, man. But let me tell you the truth.” Then she told him her story: that she did not know her real parents. A fisherman’s wife, Beena, found her when she was a two-month old baby, swaddled with a jute bag, on the Essequibo beach. She picked her up, took her to her husband Dennis, and having no children, she adopted her as her daughter. At age sixteen, disaster crept into her life. One night, Dennis getting into a fight in a rum shop, his adversary broke a bottle, stabbed him with the fangs and killed him. A month later Beena died of a heart attack. To survive, Savita attended a floral-design class, graduated, and started making floral pieces.

On a Makar Sankranti day, when the sun and moon had entered Capricorn, Jupiter in Aries, and the moon now half a disc in the middle of the dark fortnight, Bansi told Arkah that the auspicious day of Kumbha Mela had arrived. The villagers fasted on fruits and sweetmeats, bathed in the river, sang bhajans and offered prayers. Bansi performed a puja in Kumbha Pasture, fed his guests kheer, and gave monetary gifts to the poor. At this time of the year in January, the monsoonal rain of the Amazon would rage through the hinterland, abate when it reached the Essequibo islands, and fall in soft intermittent showers between clouds, sun, and moon; canals and ponds shimmering with pure water; rice fields green and happy as ever; trees celebrating their best moments.

Arkah and Savita, too, fasted, bathed in the river, and celebrated. When night arrived and the moon came out challenging clouds and drizzles, they decided to tour Kumbha Pasture for Sankranti blessings. Always in this place at night the call of bird or the thrumming of a salempenter would come as a pleasing sound. They visited the tombs and lay wreaths on them, adorned the mausoleum statuettes with garlands, and threw coins in the ponds and made wishes. To pronounce the sanctity of the night, they had taken off their shoes and walked on the wet grass and leaves as if the place was a mandir. Then, reaching the bank of a pond smothered with sumooto vines, they sat on a batseed log and watched fishes making eddies on the sky-mirrored water.

Savita dug her toes in the mud. “This is a night me will always remember.”

Arkah snapped a twig and hurled it into the pond. “We’ve had many nights like this, but tonight you make it special.”

She blushed. “What really in you heart?”

            “Pure feelings like the nectar churned from the milky ocean.”

            “Can feelings be so pure?”

            “Yes, because real love is pure.”

She laughed and rose to her feet. “Let we go home.”

Weeks passed and Phagwah came with its spring flowers, kiskadees, songs, sweatmeats, and colours. Arkah and Savita, smeared with abeer, attar, and Talcum powder, went to the sumootoo pond again. The wind now made billows on the pond, distorting the image of a sun in a blue sky.

Savita threw leaves into the pond, nudged Arkah with her elbow, and said, “Let we throw coin in the water and make a wish.”

Arkah shrugged. “That would be nice on a day like this.”

They threw twenty-five-cent pieces in the water and watched the aftermath of ripples.

Savita studied Arkah, a finger to her lips. “What you wish for?”

            “The very first thing came to my mind when I saw you in the steamer.”

            “What that?’”

            “To make you my wife.”

She flung herself into him, gripped his shoulder, and breathed heavily. “It all happen so nice. So many time me want to tell you how me feel. So many time me want you to tell me what in you heart. Never never me need so much for someone to touch me.”

            “Do you want me touch you?”

            “Yes.”

            “Then, let us go and garland each other with oleanders and pray before the Laksmi moorti that we become man and wife.”

They made oleander garlands and dropped on their knees before a large Lakshmi image near the mausoleum, closed their eyes, muttered words, then garlanded each other.

Now Arkah told Morris, “That day we became man and wife before the great Goddess, before the hilarity of robins and hummingbirds, in the witness of bright sunshine and green leaves, thinking that our love was divine. But on our new moon wedding day it seemed as if the danvavas had found the kumbha of nectar the devtas had hidden.”

Morris laughed. “Sometimes snakes live quietly in diamond-studded temples.” 

To Be Continued 

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Caribbean Moon, Indian Bride--Part Ten

 Contact Author at guyind@rcn.com

For Beginning of Story, Click Here  

  Continued from Part Nine: Savita and the Bollywood World of Saira Banu, Asha Parekh, and Zeenat Aman

Arkah’s cell phone rang and interrupted him. He pressed a button and put the phone to his ear. As a male voice spoke at the other end, he lit up and said, “Hi Morris, I’m so sorry to leave you guys at the wedding place yesterday. You see, Pa and Mother wanted us to come across here and observe their special Hindu rites.” Morris spoke again and Arkah told him that he wanted him to come across and bring a bottle of Five Year Old rum. Morris laughed. Arkah winked at Purnima, and in a voice of feigned urgency said to Morris, “They have me in a cage here, brother, feeding me only vegetable food, milk, and Persian poetry. And too much austerity isn’t good at all. So, a good bottle of rum will do me right. It will serve as a substitute for the pleasures announced by a beautiful wife.”

Morris, his full name Morris Abrams, came an hour later. He was a tall African man, almost seven feet, burly and bull-shouldered like the West Indies fast bowler Joel Garner. But he was good-looking with a face like Sidney Poitier’s, teeth milk white, his clothes fitting him neatly, his body lithe and wiry with a poise ready to ride a horse like John Wayne chasing villains.

Purnima served them cheese cubes and pepper sauce, then sat down and watched them talking about their exploits when they had been teenagers. She had never seen Arkah so spirited nd happy. He had returned to a world that was green and lovely. Laughing and shuddering, he said to Purnima, “This man Morris is no joke. We used to ride wild donkeys at night to steal old Jimmy Bone’s tamarind, mangoes, and genips. One night Morris’s donkey got wild and ran straight into Jimmy Bone’s bedroom, bursting through a cardboard wall. And there the truth was revealed. Jimmy was really a woman and not a man. From that day we got free genips, tamarinds, and mangoes.”

Purnima rocked with laughter. Morris studied her and said to Arkah, “I don’t know much about Indian movie stars, Ark, though you took me a few times to see movies like Dil Dekhi Dekho, Gumnam, and Love in Tokyo. But this wife you have here will give any of those Bombay beauties a hard run.”

Purnima blushed and lowered her eyes. Arkah tapped her cheek with a finger and said, “Well, what do you expect? She is Purnima, the full moon, you know.”

Morris’s brows knitted, forehead furrowed. “Isn’t there a movie with that name ‘Purnima’?”

Arkah reflected for a while and nodded. “Yes. I think Dharmendra starred in it. I can’t remember the star girl, but I have a feeling it was Meena Kumari.”

Morris picked up a cheese cube from the bowl and bit it delicately. He had long, slender fingers, a thin moustache, and sombre eyes in deep sockets. Purnima at once knew he was a sedentary man. Becoming enthused at the mention of the movie Purnima, she said to him, “That is a lovely movie, black and white I think. Did you like it?”

Morris straightened himself, his muscles distinct below his tee shirt. “I couldn’t remember what I saw because there was a bigger movie.”

Puzzlement clouded Purnima’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

            “There was a big fight before the movie,” he said. Then he turned to Arkah. “Remember, Ark?”

Arkah nodded, remembering everything as if it was yesterday. Seeing how Purnima was eager to hear, he told her: It was a Saturday night when the island revelled with earnings coming from the rice harvest and illuminated with a three-day-old full moon that made the place so bright that one could see a needle on the brick-strewn road. Hoogenheim Island had no electricity, save Bansi and another wealthy rice farmer who had generating plants. So, when the full moon came out and sported for a week with its blessings, the island people relished everything it offered, making up for the dark nights.

Morris, Arkah, and Agni, walking on the road to the island cinema in Granville, a village three miles from Bundarie Square, talked about Dharmendra movies and wondered what this one, Purnima, would be like. They passed crowds of people at kokers, men on Humber bicycles riding speedily to show off on girls they wanted to court, donkey carts trundling or stalling in potholes filled with sand. Men and women, on doorsteps, drenched their minds with fantasies, singing their favourite film songs. The island tonight crowned the gaiety of the world.

When they reached a cemetery crowded with tall silk-cotton trees, they saw a group of people running into an alley north. A man, Jodha, told them that an hour ago Shami, the girl who imitated Saira Banu and danced and sang on the cemetery tombs as if she were making a movie, had attempted to hang herself on a mango tree. Her wrestler brother, Shaheed, caught her in time and cut her down. She had gotten only a few bruises. But Shaheed had vowed to kill Agni who had made Shami think of doing something like that after he had broken her heart. He had left her for another girl, Vishwa, and Vishwa and Shami had become rivals in the island, vying to be the top island star in their imitation of Bombay beauties. Vishwa, trying to better than Shami, would think she was Asha Parekh singing and dancing to birds.

Shami’s other brother, Inshan, knowing that Agni would go to the cinema, waited for him under a coconut tree by the roadside. As they came nearer, Inshan emerged with a cutlass with a gleaming blade. Before Inshan could wield his weapon to sever Agni’s head, Morris took him on his unawares, plunged on him, and wrapped his arm around his neck. The cutlass fell out of Inshan’s hand, and a fair fight began with the two men. But Inshan was no match for a strong man like Morris. Morris pummeled him with his fist until he fainted. And when Shaheed arrived with his retinue of fans, Morris beat the wrestling boast out of him. The fight ended with Shami bringing a donkey cart to take her two brothers to the island hospital.

Purnima stared at Morris, her eyes beaming. “What a fighter you are.”

Morris sucked his teeth in dismissal. “That was only a little thing. Arkah had his day, too.”

Purnima;s eyes widened. “Arkah?”

            “Yes, Arkah.” And he told her the story of Arkah and Agni fishing for houri fish in a pond under a lukass tree. In anticipation of a big catch, Arkah pushed his hand in a hole under the water. Agni, too, finding a hole beside him, pushed his hand in. Arkah shouted in triumph than he had caught a good one. Agni shook his head and said he had a caught a bigger one. When the brothers pulled out their prize from their holes, they found that they were holding together a twelve-foot snake, a dangerous creature the island folks called camoudie. That was the last day Arkah and Agni went fishing.

Purnima laughed, and Morris told her more stories how he, Agni and Arkah used to play cow-boy games and hide-and-seek in bundarie swamps and how they roamed the rice fields after harvest for paddy grains popped like corn after the straw had been burnt. During Easter holidays, they made kites from smoke-herring boxes and thin tissue paper; then flew them amid the thousand kites wheeling and droning. Once a kite with a razorblade on its tail pitched and cut Arkah’s twine. His kite was lost forever, and he sulked for days.

Purnima made a face half scolding half pity and pinched Arkah’s arm. “Did you cry for your kite?”

            “I was a baby—six years old. Which baby won’t cry for his kite?”

She slopped her tongue in faked sympathy. “Okay, my baby, don’t ever cry again. I will make you another beautiful kite, right?” 

He shrugged and laughed, not knowing what to say. She rose and told them she had work to do; then she fluttered her fingers in a ‘tata’ and walked up the stairs to the second storey.

Relieved that she had left, Morris took out a bottle of rum from his side pocket, slapped the bottom of it, and wrenched off the crown; then he poured soft drink into two glasses. The two men chinked glasses, cheered, and drank.

Sailings on the wings of the liquor, Morris slapped Arkah on the back and said, “Yes, buddy, this is a good comeback for you. Never thought you would have made like this with flying colours.”

Arkah faked exasperation. “Things aren’t good as you think. The water is there in front of a thirsty horse, and he can’t drink.”

Morris threw himself back and rocked with laughter. “Yours isn’t as bad as mine.” He paused, took another drink, slopped his tongue with the stinging taste, and continued, “I never told you this part when I got married to Melissa. Her mother, Agnes, as everybody knew, didn’t like me because I am a Fellowship Believer. She wanted Melissa to marry some engineer chappie called Eric Stump belonging to the same church like her. So when Meli and I got married, she started doing things to spite me. Just after the wedding, as a sort of honeymoon, she said we must go and live with her for three months. To make Meli happy, I went with her. Agnes, with a sweet face, gave us her best bedroom with a bed dressed up with honeymoon things. I really felt nice, looking forward to a great start in life. When the time came for Meli and I to sleep together, there was the woman Agnes throwing herself between us.”

To contain his laughter, Arkah got on his feet, held his knees, and shook like a man possessed by a Dutch spirit. When he subsided, he said, “Why you didn’t tell me this before?”

            “You guys would have made me a legend. I would have had to hide from you all. You would have even given me a name.”

            “This is the best I’ve heard.”

A solemn cloud settled on Morris’s face. “So you are in the middle of things again, Ark. Just like long time.”

Arkah dropped himself on the sofa again. “Yep, and so many memories.”

            “Do you still remember that day?”

            “Sometimes.”

Morris closed his eyes, his lips clasped as if a sudden pain had whipped through him. “They had all the guns, you know. We had none. And they even had horses.”

            “Those guys seemed to take a scene out of an Indian daaku movie.”

Rage swirled in Morris’s tear-filled eyes. “I was going for one of them, you know, but the other one on horseback hit me with his shot gun handle. I went down and was coming up back when I saw the cunning smile and happiness on Savita’s face, her gladness when Rudra came into the marho for her. I would have put up a fight, you know Ark, despite their guns, but I told myself it didn’t worth it to fight for a woman like Savita.”

The rain and lightning came back to Arkah, the guns barking and hooves stampeding amid prayers, vows, feasting, dancing and singing. At that time, Morris was helping the men in the cooking tent. Arkah didn’t see when the bandit hit him. And if he had, what could he have done?

Now beleaguered with a sense of shame, he said, “I was speechless. I didn’t know what to do.”

            “Yes, she was pretty, but she was sly, cruel, and treacherous. She had disgraced the sacred thing they call matrimony. Her wedding sari became a witch’s gown. I have never hated a woman so much.”

Arkah thought Morris shouldn’t be so hard on her. He, Arkah, too, might have had his fault but couldn’t see it. Why would a woman run away with another man on her wedding day? That was only possible if something was terribly wrong with her bridegroom. Everybody was talking about the pain and shame he had suffered and cursing her that she had gone so far to destroy an innocent man. But was he, Arkah, really innocent? Was he really treating her as an angel?

He dropped his head and put a hand on his chin. “Perhaps her story has a side too.”

Morris’s eyes dilated in angry remonstrance. “Her story has a side, too?”

He yielded to him and said, “What is she doing now?”

Morris banged a hand on his leg. “That is what I want to tell you.” And he told him what had happened to her after the wedding. Her first month with Rudra had passed with celebration, extravagance, and glamour. She had equalled any celebrity of Guyana, would have even dwarfed Zeenat Aman of Bollywood if she had come to perform here. Rudra bought her thousands of dollars in jewellery, flaunted her in the island in a motorcade escorted by men on horses; then he took her for a vacation in Aruba. When she came back, she soared to such prominence that people invited her as guest-of-honour to Easter, Phagwah, Christmas, and Diwali functions. Soon, she earned the title of Lady of the Island. After two years, her significance began dwindling. The following year, Rudra, convicted of stealing cattle, had to serve a sentence of two years. To maintain herself, she sold all her jewellery. When Rudra came out of jail, he threw her out of his house. She sought refuge at her friend Seema’s place, a nearby hut. Seema, a poor woman, could not give her the luxuries she needed. First, shame beleaguered her then depression. In a month’s time she sickened to a derelict woman with a sharp temper. Seema did not mind her temperamental outbursts, but when she claimed that she was seeing ghosts, she asked her to leave. It was here she had taken refuge in one of the worst places of the island—a mangrove swamp with snakes, bats, and mosquitoes—and began living like a tramp in a makeshift coconut-branch hovel. In her suffering her legs had become swollen, her eyes threatening her with blindness. 

Click Here for Continuation of Story 

Caribbean Moon, Indian Bride--Part Nine

   Contact author at guyind@rcn.com
Click here for Beginning of Story

 Continued from Part Eight

The following night the moon in waning came out bright again. Everything like last night—the bronze-capped waves, expanse of rice fields, and cluster of huts—became washed again with splendour and happiness. The island people, in beliefs from superstition to logic, would watch the moon as it dwindled for fourteen nights until it became a sickle like a curve of wire. They called this half of lunar month krishnapaksha or dark fortnight. The next night—amawasya or amawas—when the new moon would not be seen—they would sulk a little thinking of ghosts, catastrophes, and demons, then would brighten up as the new-moon sickle grew into a full moon again. They called this half of the lunar month shuklapaksha or bright fortnight.

Purnima, still in her bridal dress, and Arkah in his bridegroom, stood at a window looking out at the river. They seemed tired, bored, and impatient, Purnima moving her feet as if standing on hot coals. When she found Arkah falling into silence, she thrust a finger into his ribs, good-humouredly, and said, “What is on your mind?”

            “You know what?”

She winked at him with a trace of reproach. “The moon right?”

He chuckled, his lips convolved with an ironic smile. “Yes, the moon.”

She pretended ignorance to his irony. “Does the moon seem smaller tonight?”

He shook his head to pity her little game. “I think so. That’s why I m looking so hard to find the missing piece.”

She ignored his tantrum again. “Everybody on this island talks about the moon. This is a moon island.”

            “Yes, it is.”

           

            “What do they do when the moon is bright like this?”

            “Many things.”

She knitted her brows to feign rebellion at his brevity. “Come on, tell me. Just don’t be. . . ” And she trailed out of words.

And not wanting her to be truly angry, he told her about the festivals the people celebrated, about men playing cards under trees, women worshipping gods and goddesses at the river beach, men performing Ramlila and Indar Sabha plays in barns of rice mills, groups singing Tulsidas’s choupaaees, beating drums and clanging cymbals. Then he remembered how he, Agni and the other boys would boil crabs in large pots for group feeding. The crabs smelled delicious in the mix of coconut milk, wiri-wiri peppers, celery, callaloo and onions. Then everyone would be ready to eat, their gara-gara leaves, plate-like, stretched out in their hands to collect their portions. After that, they played cockadillo in the woods, singing and bringing back tree leaves. These were the best times in the village: the dry season with ripened paddy grains in the fields; mango, tamarind, and jamoon trees laden with fruits; the rice mill grinding.

When she saw him lost in his world, she poked a finger into his ribs again and made a face as if to kill. “Where have you gone. . . into your dream world again?”

Quickly he came back to himself, and said, motioning to the parrot in the cage, “Thinking what that parrot would report to Mother.”

Her eyes twinkled with amusement. “Don’t worry. I know how to bribe parrots.” Then, as if acting, she laughed convulsively, and pointed to the river. “What are those lights?”

He dilated his eyes to reciprocate her act, and said, “My beautiful dulahin, that’s where you’re from. Surprised? That’s East Bank Essequibo. Those lights you see there are lights of houses and other buildings between trees.”

Elated surprise flashed in her eyes. “My! Which part do you think is my place?”

He threw an arm around her and pointed to a place where a constellation of stars hung over a purple backdrop of dull flickering lights. “There. That’s Graceland.

She stamped her mouth with a hand. “Really?” Then she fisted the other hand, stomped a foot on the ground as if ready for a big exploit. “Let’s pretend to be goblins or angels and walk across. When we reach, I will cook you a nice dinner of crabs or hassars and break Mother’s rules. Then I will take you to the cane fields and ask the cane cutters to give us sugar canes to eat.”

He stared at her, his eyes wanting to break more than rules. He felt flames leaping within him. It would be so nice to be with her in the cane fields, he thought. He could even make it romantic like one of Jeetendra’s movies, dancing, hopping, hiding, teasing and singing. Her place, Graceland, was one of the most beautiful places on the other side of the river, with canals, meadows, stretches of cane fields, coconut groves, and a sea wall like that of Mumbai, waves billowing and leaping over to the road in blasts of sprays. Many times he had thought that this was a good place for a movie. Now he fell into a swirl of him and Purnima in a dreamland of Bollywood ecstasies.”

She nudged him to whisk him out of his reverie. “Come on, tell me something.”

He jumped out of his dream. “Oh, you want me to tell you that we should go across. Well, if you think it easy to walk across a six-mile-wide river, we can go.”

            “So wide?”

            “Yes, so wide.”

            “Do you think anyone can swim across?”

He shrugged. “Someone did already.”

            “Who?”

            “Agni.”

            “Who is Agni?”

            “Thought you knew.”

            “Why? No one told me about him.”

            “He’s my brother.”

           

            “Your brother?”

He walked across to the sofa and flung himself on it. “Not my brother really. We grew up as brothers. He’s my mother’s. .. Not my mother’s…” He trailed out of words.

She too walked across and dropped herself on the sofa. “Please don’t play a game with me. I hate being in the dark.”

He threw back his head and exhaled a gush of air. “Rewati isn’t my mother. She’s my stepmother, and Agni is her brother.”

Her face contorted with disbelief. “What I’m hearing? Is Rewati your stepmother?”

He shrugged. “That’s the truth.” Then he told her that his mother Rajni had died at childbirth when he was two years old. Two years later his father married Rewati, who brought her brother Agni to live with her. He was four years old then.

Serenity pervaded her face, and she flung her arms back. “I have never seen a stepmother adore a stepson as how she adores you.”

            “With Rewati, I have never missed my mother,” he said. Then he told her when they were five years old how he and Agni used to sail paper boats on the pond behind their rice mill. One evening as they were having fun, Arkah’s boat got stuck between a bulge of grass and duckweed. To free it, he went to the edge of the pond and tried to extricate it with a bamboo rod. The dirt on the pond broke away, and he fell headlong into the deep of the water. Soon he found himself in a world of rainbows, amber moons, and lightning forks. Agni, panicked, ran and told Rewati. She sprinted, jumped into the pond and fished him out. When he came back to his senses, he saw Rewati slapping her chest, her eyes full of tears. From that day she became his real mother; Agni his blood brother.

Purnima, moved by the story, said,  “I saw the pond, a very huge and deep one.”

Arkah nodded. “We use the water from it to soak our paddy for milling.” He fell silent for a while. Then when he gathered his thoughts again, he said, “Do you like the surroundings there with the rice mill, bungalow, jamoon groves, and troolie-thatched huts?”

She brightened up, her yes like two shimmering lakes. “Beautiful.”

            “That’s why they did our wedding there, closer to everything.”

She now seemed ablaze with excitement. “Down there you have all you want of village life—the women cooking and singing, the men making tents and dancing.”

Yes, indeed she was right, he thought. When he was a child he used to think that Bundarie Square was like places in rural India he had seen in movies Jab Jab Phool Khile, Junglee, and Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon. Despite the hard work in the rice fields, cow pastures, ground-provision farms, and rice mills, angels and fairies seemed to be roaming everywhere. Colours—whether from sunsets, moonlights, gardens, or lily ponds--sang like kiskadees in trees. Even the grass after a shower of rain would challenge the green beauty faked in the best films.

The parrot cawed and said something unintelligible, hurling him out of his dream. Seeing Purnima gaping at him, he said, “Bundarie Square is different now. Many years ago people were poor but there was a kind of beauty and happiness you can’t find now.”

She ran a finger on his face in reproach. “Don’t say that. It is still beautiful.” Then she told him on her first day on the island she had taken a tour of the village and was thrilled to see women squatting on the grass, doing their laundry; boys throwing marbles into holes dug out for the game; others grazing their sheep or goats on parapets filled with daisies.

Arkah seemed happy that she liked his island. He put his lips to the nape of her neck and said, “Ah, you have a feel of it! Bundarie Square, no place like it.”

They talked more about Hoogenheim Island; then Purnima’s thoughts diverged to something everybody had been talking about. Customarily, Hindu weddings in Guyana were solemnized at the bride’s place. Why Purnima had agreed to her wedding done at the rice-mill bungalow sprouted an enigma for everyone. Though it was not Purnima’s doing alone, she had played a big part in it. Her brother Angad had bickered with her to a point that he didn’t even attend the wedding. During the preliminaries, he and Bansi differed in their views and could not come to a compromise. Bansi held out that it would be hard on Arkah to go to a distant place like Graceland to be inundated with long and complex rituals. Angad argued back that if Arkah could not make the sacrifice he was not fit to be Purnima’s husband.

Some people, however, knew why Bansi wanted the wedding at the rice-mill bungalow. He was trying to ease his obsession with an unfinished work, wanting to do Arkah’s wedding again at place for the island people to see. His deliberation was to counter the humiliation he had suffered at Savita and Arkah’s wedding.

Angry at Bansi’s adamancy, Angad tried to dissuade Purnima from going to Bundarie Square for the wedding. He told her about their family traditions, that if she acquiesced in Bansi’s plan, a curse would fall on their family. Tired of his threats and admonitions, she packed up her things and came to Bundarie Square. Rewati, excited, gave her the best room in the rice-mill bungalow.

Arkah now studied her and thought how courageous she was. He said to her, “Few girls would do what you did.”

She nodded and lowered her eyes. “Yes, I took the bull by its horns.”

He dropped a hand on her shoulder. “Things will get better. As soon as we’re settled, I will talk with Angad.”

            “Yes, that would be nice.”

           

            “Where are your parents?”

            “Both of them are dead.”

            “Goodness.”

Thinking that he wanted to know more about her family, she told him that she had another brother Devan, a lawyer, in London, and a sister Jankie, a medical doctor, in Toronto.

He sensed that she was in some remorse, and wanting to comfort her, he said, “Great family. I love to meet them.”

Like a tigress, she raised her head, her eyes spitting flames. “When you get to know them you won’t be.”

Shocked, he shivered as if an earthquake had rumbled inside him. He could not comprehend this change in her. “Why?”

She chuckled and told him that her family belonged to the Jadu clan of Uttar Pradesh, a tantric sect skilled and dangerous in the Indian black arts, Indrajal. Her father Deoram used to worship spirits roaming full moon nights. Sometimes his rituals turned into blood play and murder.

Arkah, shattered, concealed his despair, and brandished a dismissive hand, telling himself that she was only saying these things to be funny.

She peered at him, her face constrained and dangerous. “You don’t believe, right?”

He flung another dismissive hand, a forced leer on his lips. “Well, to tell you the truth, all my life, I’ve wanted to become something like a vampire—a dangerous one sucking blood and killing people.” Then he fondled her ear. “And now I’ve found the gem of my life, my full moon bride that will kill dangerous men.”

She softened, so quickly that he became bewildered, her eyes glistening with tears. “This is serious, Ark. I am not kidding. I was born on a full moon night when my father was worshipping full moon spirits. That is why they call me ‘Purnima,’ meaning ‘full moon.’”

Belligerence suffused his face. “So you want to say you have a curse? No, no, no, no, I won’t buy that. You’re my wife. Whether demon, man, or god tries to take you away from me, I will kill him.”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand.” Then she exhaled heavily and slapped her thigh. “I don’t know how to begin. . . how to explain to you.”

Though intrigued, he was adamant. “I don’t want any explanation. I took sacred vows for you. And more than all, I love you. If I have to go beyond what I have, I will go to protect you.”

A strange look came over her, a look neither infernal nor paradisiacal. She seemed dangerous yet beautiful. Then in a voice between pleading and rebuking, she said, “Ark, I know you are a doctor who knows many things, a specialist in the study of the mind. But what has happened to me, and what is happening now, is beyond laboratory, universities, and books.”

He pulled her into him and wrapped her arms tightly around her, a blending of rage and desire whirling within him. “Stop it! I don’t want to hear. I don’t care what had happened to you twenty odd years ago. All that I care about is you and how I must protect you from things that will come between us.”

She pushed him at arm’s length and stared into his eyes. “You don’t know what you are saying. I wish if it were so easy.”

He got on his feet and strode to the window, then looked again at the moon on the river as if nourishing himself with power. She too rose and followed him. He turned around and said softly, passion and will flaring in his nostrils. “Look, I have journeyed through many tunnels of fire, ice and trapdoors, and my courage and faith have led me out safely to gardens of sunshine again. I have fought many dragons, dangerous and formidable ones, and the same faith and courage have made me kill them all. Now with my faith and courage, I have your love. And with your love, nothing can defeat me, nothing can bring strife, hate and destruction between us.”

She began to sob, like fire reduced to ashes. Softness possessed him, holding his wild desire at bay, so that he touched her face, wanting to give her everything, even his blood, even his soul. Unable to bear her sobbing, he said, “Don’t cry.”

            “I am afraid, Ark.”

            “Why?”

            “I am afraid that you are building mansions and that a terrible earthquake is coming.”

He laughed a mirthless laugh. “Even the demon of earthquakes I will kill to save our love.”

She looked up into his eyes. “I am thinking of Agni.”

He shook a little, startled. “Oh.”

            “You love him as your brother, but does he love you the same?”

A puzzled look inundated his eyes. “I love him, yes. And he loves me too.”

She shrugged and nodded with leering lips. “Yes, you are brothers.”

A sense of foreboding swept through him. He wondered why she was thinking of Agni this way. Did she know something he didn’t know? Had she heard gossips from the villagers? Trying to be composed, he said, “Agni and I grew up together. We are real brothers. But one of us had to be better than the other---”

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Caribbean Moon, Indian Bride--Part Eight

 Contact writer at guyind@rcn.com
Continued from Part Seven 


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Arkah and Bansi talked about many things, about the rice fields, the river eating away the island, influential men in the country, and about education and culture, Bansi talking more. Arkah looked at him covertly and thought what a wonderful man he was. He wondered if he could have had a better father than he. So much love he had given him since he was a child. Never had he yelled at him though he had done things to anger him. He had never beaten him though he had performed mischief that called for a whipping. Then he remembered Agni, his stepbrother, Rewati’s brother whom Bansi adopted as his son.  He said,  "I always remember, Agni, Pa. "

            “You and Agni like me two eyes, son,” Bansi  said.

When Rewati had brought Agni to their bungalow, he was four years old, Arkah’s age, a thin, reticent boy whose nose was always running with snot and who wet his bed at night. Arkah had his doubts about Agni like many of the villagers, puzzled how a young child like him could be Rewati’s brother. He was more like Rewati’s son. Unable to bear his doubts, he asked Bansi one day, “Pa, how Agni can be Mother brother? He not he son?” Bansi squinted at him remonstratively, and said, “Never ask am me that question again. Agni ah you Mother little brother and he ah me son and you brother.” From that day he closed his ears to gossips and tried to believe what Bansi had told him.

Agni grew up as the hero and idol of Bundarie Square, surpassing Arkah in every way. Girls quickly fell for him because he was as handsome as the Indian film star Dharmendra. Everybody told him that he should be a politician because of his eloquence. He was the first person to swim across the eight-mile stretch of river. And a man, Dunstan, told him that he was so talented that he could be a West Indies cricketer like Rohan Kanhai or Gary Sobers. He was at the centre of everything in the island, like an originator, like Brahma, from whom everything evolved. The regattas with festive boats racing in the river could not exist without him. The cricket games with spectators cheering in saffron-blossomed fowl-cock trees were nothing without his presence. The fragrance of sumootoos, monkey-apples, mangoes, and awaras in their seasons had no scent without his voice and smile. Christmas carols, Easter kites, Phagwah colours and chowtals would have no effect if he would not come out to the road and raise his hand. The island with its dreams and glitters of Hollywood and Bombay movies would be a dull place if he did not repeat the drama of Tony Curtis, Clint Eastwood, Rajendra Kumar, Raj Kumar, Gregory Peck, Dharmendra, and other film men. The pretty girls of the island, to win his attention, imitated the poise and look of Elizabeth Taylor, Mala Sinha, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Saira Banu, and Madhubala. The beauty of the island was his beauty: tractors ploughing the fields and swarms of white cranes fluttering behind; poui, frangipani, sunflower, oleander and flamboyant trees blooming in a marriage between soft rain and lilting sunshine; the splendour of Diwali with diyas on windows, lawns, and floating like miniaturized torches on ponds and trenches. The music was his music: fishermen’s conch shells blowing; rice mills trumpeting; kiskadees and parrots calling; six o’clock bees cheeping; cows mowing; sheep bleating. Then, above all, he was the epitome of the silk cotton trees towering and branching to sky with white silken blossoms.

Now Bansi scratched his moustached, and said to Arkah, “Good boy, that Agni. Not me own son. But where you can find a better child than that? When you lef, how that boy cry. You won’t believe this, me son. That boy ah something else when e come to brother love. You know, he always want to go to UG and study. So now that you lef, he nah coulda go. You know what he do? He start study from a correspondence course in England. And that boy so bright that he pass he B.A. English.”

Arkah’s face fell in despair. “I am the cause of all of this.”

Bansi shook his head and told him not to blame himself for anything. Agni was not angry with him for leaving, he said. Instead he said that he, Arkah, had a right to do what he did, to leave the island. He himself would have done the same thing. Then he told him about Agni’s frustrations, the reason why he had gone to Jamaica.

                       

“I hope he gets the contract for the rice in Jamaica,” Arkah said.

           

“Me pray to Bhagawan he get am, son. Poor boy! He so worried about everything. He work so hard in the rice field to get the paddy to the rice mill. And when to sell am the rice and get a good price, the big people take everything and give ahwe little or nothing.”

“I know the amount of work I left for him, how much he had to do. I don’t know how he managed.”

Bansi slopped his tongue, shook his head, dropped a hand on his shoulder, and told him that Agni never complained. In torrential rain and blistering sun he worked. He ploughed the fields though the tractor broke down several times. He reaped the rice though the combine-harvester stalled and slumped in the mud. After work in the fields, at night he would go to the rice mill to supervise workers. Then he had the cows and horses to look after.

“No one man in this whole world can do so much work,” Bansi said. “Me nah know how he manage.”

“I’m so glad to see him, Pa.”

“He go come back soon, son. Nah worry. Two month time he go be back here.”

“He too should get married, Pa.”

“Son, if me tell you this story you nah go believe. What Savita done to you affect he too. He say e go take he a long time to trust any woman. After you story, that boy change so much. He not the Agni you know. Something come over he, that me begin to think otherwise. But more than all, this ah de big story: He say that you older than he two month, so you ah the big brother, and big brother get to marry first. After you marry, he say, he ah go try to settle down somehow, though he mind nah deh pon marriage.”

Arkah laughed. “You know, Pa, when we were teenagers, Agni used to be the star boy. All the girls used to run after him. I remember when I had a crush on Baddu’s daughter, Fari. What a time I had with that girl that I couldn’t read my books in peace! Fari’s face used to come on the page I would read. Then I couldn’t concentrate anymore. When I saw Indian pictures, I used to imagine the Indian star girls were Fari. Then suddenly, Fari brushed me aside and fell for Agni. She even wanted to commit suicide when Baddu married her off to Sugrim, the rum-shop man.”

Bansi told him that girls were still running after him. One of them, Pinkie, when she heard that another girl Rani liked Agni, she jumped off the steamer in the river to commit suicide. Then collecting her thoughts and realizing that Angi had nothing to lose if she died, she swam ashore and started another game. She pretended that a Dutch spirit possessed her and only Agni could exorcise her. .

            “And what Agni did?” Arkah asked.

“Well, he been get more serious spirit to take out, about twenty ah them. All them girl been ah catch jumbie spirit foh he marry them. And them obeah man been ah make money like peas. One ah them even buy a brand new Camry car from the money he make.” 

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Caribbean Moon, Indian Bride--Part Seven

Continued from Part Six

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Someone rapped on the door. A trifle nervous, Purnima rose and sat back in the sofa. Arkah got up too and trudged to the door. When he opened it, a man in his sixties, Bansi, and a woman, Rewati, in her late fifties, walked in. Bansi—a thin, tall, balding man wearing a white dhoti and kurta—was Arkah’s father. Rewati--a corpulent woman wearing a yellow sari and orhni, and like Purnima adorned with heavy gold jewellery around heck and on her forearms--was his stepmother. She, a woman with aggressive large eyes, struck a contrast to Bansi, who appeared subdued, frightened, and pale. His only show of power was his thick white moustache that grew wildly to conceal his upper lip then to take a downward turn to form crescents on his chin.

When Rewati saw Purnima, she waddled in and threw her arms around her. Then she pushed her at arms length, her eyes peering, and studied her face as if she were a golden woman dropped from the sun. Brushing a hand on her face, she said in a Creolese vernacular rich with Bhojpuri cadence, “Me pretty-pretty bahu. No najar, bad-eye, on you. Even one fly light pon this pretty face, me go maar-saaray kill am dead-dead, stinking nasty fly.”

Purnima lowered herself and touched her feet; then she turned around and did the same to Bansi, who chanted a Sanskrit verse and lifted her up, gazing too at her as if she were Sita at her best walking out from the pages of Valmiki’s Ramayana.

Singing a bhajan, Rewati took out a thaalee from a cupboard, put in it a diya, and lit the wick inside. Then she orbited it around Purnima’s head, singing another bhajan, Man kee aakhen khol. Shaking with emotions, she put down the thaalee, stared again at Purnima as if it was part of her ritual, and told her she had done the arti on her for Lakshmi, the goddess of light, to bless her.

Bansi, his eyes moist with tears, clasped his hands and bowed to Purnima. Unable to contain himself, he said in a Bhojpuri accent more distinct than Rewati’s, an accent that sparked his ancestral melodies and linked them to a journey from Uttar Pradesh to British Guiana, “You nah know how much you mean to ahwe in this life, bahu. You now more than a daughter-in-lah. In this house you ah Lakshmi, you ah Saraswati, you ah Gauri, you ah Savitri. You ah the best devi, bahu, that even Menaka, Indra most beautiful fairy, who break am the meditation of Vishwamitra, goh feel small in front ah you. You bring light and shanti to ahwe. And what more anybody can want in this world?”

In a mingling of discomfiture and bashfulness, Purnima’s face coloured, her throat undulating like the back of a caterpillar. She said, “Pa, I don’t have words . . .” And running out of words, she dropped her head and stared at her toes.

Rewati threw a hand around her and appraised herself, her eyes gleaming with pride. When she got Purnima’s attention, she said, singing more than talking, “You see, bahu. Ahwe too ah wear India clothes this whole month to keep up with you and Ark. Ahwe nah want to make you feel that ahwe ah punish you. This ah God story, bahu, to make them devta and devi feel happy and bless you.”

Purnima faltered with nervous exultation, and trying to regain power, she said, “I know. I know.” Rewati, sensing her awkwardness, wrapped an arm around her and told her it was time for them to go upstairs to worship the goddess Gauri. If Purnima worshipped Gauri with her choicest flowers and fragrances, Rewati told her, the goddess will give her health, riches and peace. Then Rewati dilated her eyes, bit her lip to repress a smile, put her mouth close to her ears, looking askance at Arkah and Bansi, and said, “Then you know what? Nah feel shame. You shame, nah?” Her whisper became almost inaudible. “You has to get a baccha or bacchee, a bootiful-bootiful baby like moon, the best grandpicknie foh ahwee in this world.” Purnima chuckled and covered her face with her palms. Rewati pinched her nose in faked remonstrance and continued, “Bahu you nah know how me want a baccha or bacchee in this house, a picknie foh me dulaaray and give milk and sing song and rock am ah hammock and to play hide-and-seek and hang up socks foh am Christmas time. Then Diwali time me goh teach am foh light diya and sing am bhajan and play drum and to pray to Bhagawan and eat nough-nough mohanbhog.”

Bansi and Arkah stared at her, puzzled by her act. And seeing she had created her desired effect, she held Purnima’s hand and led her to the foot of the stairs. A sudden thought striking her, she stopped and turned around, feigning speaking to Purnima but loud enough for the two mean to hear. “And you has to listen to me, bahu, and do everything what me tell you. For a whole month you get foh do Gauri pooja, do havan and arti, give Gauri Ma you whole heart, and make that devi feel you heart belong to she.”

Arkah turned pale at her insinuation. And happy that she had hit her target, seeing the expression on Arkah’s face, she said to him, “And you too, Ark. You get foh sit down now and forget all them university thing in you head, all them big-big book you ah read, and start for jap karay, meditate, pon Shiv Bhagwan. Shiv Bhagawan goh bless you, son, and make you brain turn computer, library, encyclopedia, Mahapuran.”

Then she began flinging her hands about and swinging her body as if fighting mosquitoes. Satisfied with her little drama, she put her palms to her cheeks, and in a subdued voice—almost a whisper—told Arkah that if he prayed sincerely, God would make him so powerful that even with a click from his fingers he would make rain fall and airplanes appear in the sky.

Arkah could not contain his laughter. Feeling ridiculed, Rewati assumed a harsh face, her hand fisted, and began a story about a man Richard who had a ground-provision farm plundered by thieves. She told him that Richard, tired of thieves and losses, turned to God for help. After months of prayer, God appeared to him in the form of a dove and asked him what he wanted. Weeping, he said he wanted to know who were stealing his plantains and cassava. The dove told him that his troubles had now come to an end, that he would bestow him with an understanding of the language of sheep, goats, cats, dogs, and rats. These animals would watch over his farm and report to him the thieves stealing his things.

Arkah rocked with laughter at the absurdity. Incensed, she said, “You think you can fool me, eh? If you nah pray to Bhagawan, me goh know. Bhagavan give me power too to understand language of animal and bird.” She pointed to the parrot in a cage hanging from the ceiling. “You see that parrot down there, eh? That me watchman. He go tell me every, everything you do. So pray to Bhagawan, okay?”

Arkah lowered his head to her, pretending defeat and deference. “Yes, Mother, I will meditate upon Bhagawan.”

Her eyes still narrowed with hostility, she took Purnima by the arm and led her upstairs, her footfalls loud and aggressive. Bansi breathed out a gush of air in relief, and said, “She ah one helluva woman.” Then he dropped himself in the sofa and beckoned Arkah to sit beside him.

Silenced intervened between them for a while, and when Bansi could not bear the weight between them, he said, “You mother a bit funny, but she ah talk am little sense.”

            “I know, Pa.”

            “Son, I know this hard what you mother put on you---”

Arkah interrupted and said, “No, Pa, I understand everything. I know how you felt when Rudra and his men came in the thick of my wedding, broke it up, and took Savita away. . .” He trailed out of words, the memory hitting him like a thunderbolt. Rudra was a cattle owner and bandit living on the northern fringes of the island on a hundred-acre plot of land patched with rice fields, cow pastures, and mangrove swamps. Savita was Arkah’s bride, the woman he had loved with all his heart. He had never imagined she would do something like that, to run away with a bandit in her bridal apparel, leaving him to die in shame and pain.

Before the wedding, Savita had written him letters to reveal her deepest feelings, making promises to rival the Hindu ideal woman, Anusuya. She walked on the road as if beauty, modesty and love were her only treasures, shaming the drama of Madhubala, Nargis, and Meena Kumari in their best movies, eclipsing the passions of Uttara--in the Mahabharata—yearning for Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna. Then on their wedding day—in the rain, thunder, and lightning—the butterfly with gold-patterned wings had become a serpent. In the bamboo marho decorated with crepe paper, banana leaves, artificial onions, ritual flags, and ornamental roses, he looked at her and remembered Nirupa Roy in the movie Dulhan. The priest chanted mantras; women in ornhis beat dholaks and sang sohars; young women dressed up like Audrey Hepburn looked at Savita and daydreamed that they too were getting married; young men wearing Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor or John Wayne hairstyles danced like Elvis Priestly or Shammi Kapoor to songs from a juke box; under the cooking tent two men played tassa drums; guests ate curried food in poorine or gara-gara leaves. Then the priest raised a hand. Rewati knotted Savita’s bridal apparel to Arkah’s, and they began to go round the blazing fire kund: seven rounds they had to make. The rain came harder with a tornado-like wind. The coconut trees swayed as if they would snap in pieces. Roofs of huts broke loose and flew like saucers. The howling of the wind and the swooshing of the rain made a music that was neither hell nor heaven. The thunder clapped, stopped; then report from guns and a stampede of horses’ hooves swallowed everything. Masked men on horse backs, about twenty of them, rode into the wedding crowd and shouted profanities. Rudra pulled off his mask, fired his shot gun and told the screaming people to lie facedown. Then he walked into the marho, snipped the marriage knot with a cutlass, hoisted Savita, and took her to his horse.

Now Arkah said to Bansi, “I know if you had a gun, Pa, what you would’ve done. I saw the rage in your eyes. I saw your trembling hands ready to kill. I saw how it hurt you more when Savita jumped on Rudra’s horseback, jeered at us and rode away with him. I saw something in you that day, Pa, which made me proud of you, of the stories you told me of India.”

Bansi dissolved into reminiscence, then said, “Son, now that you tell me these things again, it look like only yesterday. Since you great grandfather, Mohan, buy this estate, that been the first time somebody molest ahwe like that. Even you grandfather, Murli, would ah jump pon Rudra throat with he bare hand even if Rudra had a machine gun or cannon. But at that time many thing been on me mind, mostly you. If me de make up me mind and attack Rudra that day, he would ah kill me. Then me woulda been no more to stand by you side.” He put his hand on Arkah’s head as a blessing, then continued, “That been a long time, son, and that pass and gone. That been a new moon wedding, and no more new moon wedding in this family. That why we do a full moon wedding this time. Full moon have many good things. It give children, it give love, it make the rice field prosper, the trees green. It bring rain and make the devtas happy. Everything with you new moon wedding with Savita been wrong. That why I agree with you mother that you do everything right this time.” 

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