Akriti opened her tiny ruby-tinted lips but didn't say anything. Trishna
touched the child's mouth with her index finger and led her back into the
house. Trishna took Akriti to her bedroom on the ground floor avoiding the
kitchen and the drawing room. Akriti was grateful to her aunt for her
discretion.
Trishna's room had a mahogany bed with a deep chocolate colored bedspread
and caramel covered pillows. A stained oval mirror with a fading brass
frame hung on the wall. Under it was a side table cluttered with Trishna's
jewelery and make-up. The clovish smell of tiger balm enveloped the room.
Trishna picked up Akriti and gently placed her on the bed. Akriti fidgeted
knowing that she would be asked for an explanation soon, but her aunt just
patted her head and said, “You have such thick and long hair.” Akriti had
knee length hair, the longest in her class; lush and raven black. She loved
her hair and was used to people oohaahing over it.
Trishna smoothened a stray strand on Akriti's forehead and said, “Let me oil
your it for you.” She opened the steel almira and took out a red Kerala
cotton towel. Then, picking up a wide toothed plastic comb, a square
frameless hand mirror and the blue coconut oil bottle she sat cross-legged
on the bed. She placed the towel on her niece's shoulder and uncoiled the
plaited hair. Moistening her palms with the fragrant coconut oil, Trishna
massaged Akriti's head with the tips of her fingers. Slowly.
“Would you like a French braid?”she asked. Akriti, who had closed her eyes to
relish the treat, nodded. Trishna neatly parted and cross-stitched her
niece's hair into a stylish plait. “Look, look at yourself,” Trishna said
holding the mirror so that Akriti could see herself. Seeing her niece's eyes
widen in astonishment of her own beauty Trishna asked, “Does your mother
plait your hair like this?” Akriti was torn between loyalty to her mother
and the truth. She lowered her long eyelashes. “If you were my daughter, I
would plait your hair like this every day, my little rajkumari.” Trishna
said with a smile, ''some jasmine for your hair and you will be perfect.
I'll get it for you.”
Alone in the room, Akriti held up the mirror and admired her hair and imagined
how it would feel to be Trishna's daughter; being pampered like a princess
at all times. Trishna returned with a jasmine garland and a glass of lime
water. She attached the jasmine to Akriti's hair with long black hair pins.
Akriti took a deep breath inhaling the freshness of the jasmine and gave her
aunt an grateful look.
“So, tell me what were you doing outside, bag and all?” Trishna asked. Akriti
sipped the sweet lime juice and told her aunt what she had been planning.
She wasn't unhappy at home and it had not been her intention to run away
from home permanently. What she wanted was a secret day trip to see the
world and explore its many wonders on her own, like an adult.
Having put Akriti to sleep, Trishna picked the girl's bag. She now had
tangible proof of Jaya's negligence. Jaya was Trishna's sister-in-law and
Akriti's mother. Trishna had always suspected that Jaya was an indifferent
mother. Jaya was indifferent to almost everything except her work and it was
this quality that bothered Trishna the most. When Jaya first married into
the household more than a decade ago, Trishna played the perfect elder
sister-in-law - introduced Jaya to all the neighborhood Mamis, showed her
which vendor sold the best tomatoes and advised her on what price to pay for
onions depending on the season, explained the topography of the area with
easy to remember landmarks (the post office, the chemist, the house with the
pink gate, etc) so that Jaya would not get lost in case she was alone. In
return, while Jaya was always polite, too polite in Trishna's opinion, she
never engaged back. Her eyes would sometimes glaze over as if the
conversation bored her; she was completely disinterested in the past
misdeeds of other members of the family.
Worse, she hated Jaya's lack of interest in her own looks. Trishna spent
hours on various herbal homemade cosmetics. She mixed heena, shikakai and
reeta powder with water and apply the wet mixture on her hair, tolerating
the dampness for several uncomfortable hours. While cutting vegetables she
stored away the orange, lemon and carrot peels. She then crushed these in
the granite mortar and applied the pulp on her face. She waited eagerly
for the monthly issue of Femina to discover the beauty enhancing
applications of milk, curd, egg and turmeric. Yet, none of this achieved the
one effect that Trishna craved for; Jaya, who never bothered with face
treatments and hair care, had a look of perennial serenity and sweetness as
if she spent all her time lighting incense sticks and watering rosebuds.
Trishna hated the way all the men in the house softened around Jaya, as if
she were something delicate and fragile. Jaya never seemed to notice or
appreciate this special treatment. The only thing that interested and
animated Jaya was her work.
Jaya made embroidered furnishings and sold them to boutiques all over the
city. She had learned appliqué and patchwork from an old Gujarati
neighbor who lived near her parents house. After Jaya got married, she
started making cushion covers out of old bedspreads for the house. She
would cut up the more colorful bedsheets into basic shapes of birds, animals
and trees and stitch these into square shaped cloth cut out of the cream
bedsheets. Trishna privately thought these covers were too earthy and rough,
but the rest of the family especially their mother in law Narayani
encouraged Jaya to keep stitching. Jaya started making other things – wall
hangings, letter holders, photo frames and lamp shades. She never made the
same thing twice. She had this instinctive urge to diversify, to create
something new every time– a different pattern, style, technique. Jaya added
a touch of her created color to every part of the house.
Jaya would go to Commercial Street and spend time with the darzis in dimly lit
rooms to learn different embroidery styles. She bought thin books printed
on cheap paper with textile patterns from the crafts section of Gangarams
and tried to recreate them on different types of cloth – cotton, chiffon,
georgette, jute, silk, velvet, lace, crepe and satin. To pay for the
constant expenditure on cloth, threads, pattern books, mirrors, beads and
other material, Jaya started selling her work to neighbors and extended
family. As the demand kept increasing Jaya would work well beyond midnight
in the kitchen, with a single lampshade so that the light would not disturb
any one else in the family. But it became apparent that she needed more
space – to keep the textiles, to work uninterrupted. To Trishna's dismay,
without Jaya ever articulating the demand for a room of her own, the family
cleared the storage room, in the terrace, of its moth eaten sofas, broken
chairs, water storage drums filled with old newspapers and dusty carton
boxes. An old carpenter with cracking, Durerish hands built the furniture
for the room – a rosewood chair and table, wooden shelves for storing
cloth. Jaya decorated it herself – flax handloom curtains embellished with
hunter green creepers and coral phulkari flowers, a maya blue wall hanging
with Kutch mirror and turquoise bead work and an amaranth pink cotton rug.
Under the wall hanging, she placed a mattress wrapped in a multi-colored
patchwork quilt to serve as a divan. Jaya added her touches to the terrace
too. She bought jasmines, roses, marigolds and gulmohars in terracotta pots
from street vendors, who traveled through Amrur on Sundays selling plants
on wooden carts. The four walls of the terrace were lined with the
plants. The cement floor of the terrace was covered with mud stains and
dried flowers and petals. Enveloped by the fresh scent of the flowers and
warm sunlight that streamed into her room at most hours, Jaya created
intricate floral and geometrical patterns. She worked with complete
concentration; her only indulgence being the music she listened to on an old
Sony two-in-one, the calming and rhythmic ancient chants – Vishnu
Sahasranama, Baja Govindam, Mahishasur Mardini and Hanuman chalisa.
If Jaya lingered for hours on her embroidery, she completed her housework
very quickly and efficiently. She never chatted with Trishna over tea or an
evening snack. She was always impatient to get back to her work. This
impatience irked Trishna. Why was her work so important to Jaya that she
never took time to enjoy the smaller pleasures of life – watching the boys
on the street play cricket, discussing the latest Mithun movie, loitering in
Amrur's sari shops, exchanging recipes with other women who lived in the
street. Trishna also resented the universal admiration that Jaya's work
provoked – from the family, neighbors, guests. No one ever complimented her
for the beautiful kolam she drew every morning or for fresh fruit juices
she made in the evening – grape, watermelon, lime, apple, papaya, orange;
the work she did despite her terrible migraines.
