A Lonely Harvest Read online

  For the first time in a long while, looking at that steaming plate of food, Ponna felt the desire to eat.

  FIFTEEN

  Just like Seerayi had predicted, Ponna’s father and brother came over immediately in their bullock cart. They even brought along Muthu’s wife and son. As if they had come bearing wedding gifts, they unloaded several small sacks from the cart. Some brass cooking vessels too. They had brought dried grains, various kinds of lentils, karuppatti, coconut and several other things.

  Ponna’s sister-in-law, Poovayi, rushed to her and embraced her. ‘Better times ahead, finally,’ she said.

  All the elderly women, the paattis who had been resting in the shade of the portia tree, sat up and talked among themselves, muttering, ‘Had Kali been alive, they’d have brought even more lavish gifts.’

  ‘This is nothing. If it is a male child, the uncle would bring enormous gifts.’

  ‘The uncle already has a boy. If this happens to be a girl child, they can marry each other. Muthu has one child, and Ponna will have one. Both wealth and relations, everything will stay within the family.’

  ‘Well, that’s what we wish, but it is important that god wishes the same.’

  ‘That’s right. If all our wishes come true, then what’s the point of a god?’

  ‘You are right. He might even act contrarily just to spite us. That is why a lot of people do not ask god for specific things. They just pray to him to do as he sees fit.’

  And so the women sat and talked about such things.

  Meanwhile, Seerayi and Vallayi were busy recounting everything from the beginning, proudly talking about how they realized Ponna was pregnant. Ponna appeared to be a bit more energetic after eating her meal. She walked, holding her sister-in-law’s hand, and emerged from the hut and sat down on the stone. Her sister-in-law undid Ponna’s hair and rubbed oil on it. Ponna had not taken care of her hair for several days, so it looked like a palm sheath, all tangled up. ‘Make sure you wash this oil out in time, using some herbal powder. Otherwise, it will become hard to untangle your hair fully,’ she said to Ponna as she used a comb to loosen up the tangles. She did it very gently, turning Ponna’s head this way and that, making sure the comb did not pull too hard and hurt Ponna. Ponna was still not fully aware of everything happening around her. She had not expected her mother and mother-in-law to be this happy at the news. Then, there was the happiness expressed by the people of the village, with everyone visiting her. And now, gifts from her natal family. Everyone looked radiant. Just one person’s pregnancy brings joy to so many people.

  Ponna felt that she could now begin to grasp why people considered childlessness such a great misfortune. A child contains within itself the possibility of great joy and celebration. If this was how people responded at the beginning, Ponna wondered how things would be when the child was delivered. Nangai was full of advice and suggestions: ‘You will feel this retching sensation in the morning. Don’t force yourself to throw up. Your throat will go sore. Just pop a small piece of karuppatti. It will help ease the retching. If you don’t wake up too quickly but just lie around for a while before getting up, you will feel less dizzy. Then as the day progresses, you will feel much stronger. Don’t tire yourself out, only do the chores you can do. Once you enter the fifth month, all this vomiting will stop. Then you can feel normal.’

  Seerayi turned to Muthu and said, ‘My dear boy, we need to look ahead now. Your friend acted in haste and is gone now. It is true that we would all have been happier if he were still here, but he is not going to return just because we spend all our time thinking of him. It looks like this child was destined to come only after taking the father away. From now on, we rely on your help. It rained last night. If Kali had been here, he’d have secured the bulls to the plough first thing in the morning. It is a little too late for kambu millets and groundnuts. But we can still scatter maize all over the field. That will also give us enough to feed the few cattle we have here. We can also feed them the grass that will grow. Let Vallayi take care of the house and the girl. I will work in the fields. You please help us.’

  ‘We still have a good part of the day left, Atthai,’ said Muthu. ‘I will sow maize today in one long measure of land. We can do the rest tomorrow. I will make sure we do the sowing when the soil is still wet. We won’t leave anything undone.’

  ‘That’s right, Muthu,’ said Seerayi. ‘When we have a life growing here in the house, the field too should be tended to. That’s the right way to do things. The family will thrive just as the land does. So, yes, please do the sowing today. I don’t know how much maize he has kept. There won’t be enough to sow over the entire land. He would have planned to focus on kambu and groundnuts and would have kept just enough maize for the remaining land. Let us ask Ponna, she would know. Otherwise, we can just go take a look in the storage room ourselves.’

  Muthu set out right away to the field to see where he could begin sowing. He still did not feel he had the courage to look Ponna in the eye. What would he say to her? It was the visit to the temple festival that had given her this child. So the problem had never been with her. It had been with Kali. What would Kali have thought about this had he been alive? Would he have felt hurt that this child had come to make it known to the world that he was the deficient one? Or would he have rejoiced that the village could taunt them no more for being childless? This child has been given by some god. But if you think about it, we are all children given by god. Also, there is no family where the lineage has been straight and pure. Every family has some story it wishes to downplay. There is no family about which someone doesn’t say—she went there, he went there. Why, even his own father, when he was angry with him, would occasionally remark, ‘Who knows whom you were born to?’ Clearly, he harboured some such ideas himself. If one were to think about it, all those stories about people changing, or castes changing, or villages changing, or even countries changing—they all make sense somehow.

  In Sevvoor, there is something called the Vellaiyan Kaadu—the White Man’s Field. Muthu learnt about it when he went there to do some paid ploughing work. In that family that hired him, he noticed that at least one person of every generation was born very fair-skinned, just like a white foreigner. But they took pride in that fair skin. Even the farmer who owned that land was quite fair-complexioned. It was he who said to Muthu, ‘Long ago, in our family, there was a very attractive woman. She was dark-skinned like all our people were, but apparently, she had a kind of radiance and everyone found her attractive. After her marriage, she went with her husband to watch the temple chariot. A white officer who saw her there forcefully took her with him. The husband too followed them and waited outside the white man’s bungalow. Apparently, he sat there the whole night. After all, he could not have just left his wife there with the white man, could he? Nor could he fight and protest against him. The next day, she came out crying—while the white man emerged, grinning, and even patted this man on his back, implying that the man was lucky to have such an attractive wife. The white man also offered him a wad of cash. But the husband didn’t take it. He wept. The white man wondered what gift would make him happy and then decided to give him ten acres of unclaimed common land. If you offer land to a farmer, he’d forget everything else, he’d give you anything. That’s how this land came to us, you see. Thanks to that foremother of ours. There was no way we could have got land like this by ourselves. The seed that the white man sowed still keeps coming down the generations. In each generation a boy or girl is born white-skinned. And this name, White Man’s Field, has stuck. In this village, people do marry outside their caste, but it all happens hush-hush. But everyone knew about that woman in our family going with the white man. So I am frank about it. When people come to marry into our family, we let them know that the child is likely to be born fair-skinned.’ He also added, ‘When a child is born fair, no one seems to mind. They take pride in it.’ So everything boils down to our perspective on things.

  Muthu looked at the f
ield. All the squares of land seemed to be in good shape, their raised boundaries all in proper condition. He chose a square of land in which the soil was still moist, and started plucking away the kolunji plants that had been growing there. It occurred to Muthu that this land too has been touched and handled by various people. Once a person takes it over from the earlier owner, they carry on with the ploughing and sowing, don’t they? Muthu said to himself that he needed to do all he could to make sure Ponna didn’t suffer. There was nothing he could do about the void created by Kali’s death. The couple had been very happy together. Kali had given up everything for Ponna and had stayed confined to this barnyard. But before Kali and Ponna had got married, Muthu and Kali had gone looking for women at least once a month. So later when Kali asked for Ponna’s hand in marriage, even though Muthu happily agreed to it on the outside, he was anxious in his heart, wondering if Kali would mend his ways or not. Muthu had not at all expected how faithful Kali had stayed to Ponna. She had kept him under her control—if he was so much as friendly with the sort of person she disapproved of, she inevitably made her displeasure known.

  Kali had said to Muthu several times in the past, ‘The best thing you have done for me is to have given your sister in marriage to me.’ Muthu now felt that if Kali had stopped to think about their friendship, he wouldn’t have ended his life. Kali had come to think of Ponna as his own precious property. Muthu felt very lonely there without Kali. When he had plucked away half a field of kolunji plants, he heard his father call out to him, ‘Hey, boy!’ After Kali’s death, Muthu’s father had started being more affectionate towards him. Even though he yelled back, ‘I am coming, I am coming,’ he left only after he finished weeding out all the kolunji growth and tying it in a bundle. The kolunji shoots were still fresh, some still had flowers on them. If he dumped them all into a pit, they’d make good manure. Kali had always thought of such small ideas and details. Muthu walked on, feeling that even though Kali himself had gone, he had left his thoughts and ideas behind. But Muthu could not help wondering how different things would have been if Kali himself had still been with them.

  SIXTEEN

  Muthu did not know anything at all about that particular custom. But his father seemed to be aware of it. It was good that Thorattu Paatti reminded them.

  At dusk, when the sun grew less harsh, all the paattis got ready to leave. From the gifts that had come from Ponna’s village, they were given two bananas and a piece of karuppatti each, which they bundled up in the folds of their saris. Kulla Paatti said, ‘You are giving so much even to us old women. What did you give Kaaraan who brought you the good news?’

  Muthu replied, ‘We rewarded him to his heart’s content, aaya.’

  After hearing the news from Seerayi, Kaaraan had set out immediately to convey it to Ponna’s family. Anyone in his place would have agreed to do the task. Any young boy would have loved to run and convey the news and pocket the reward. That was why Kaaraan did not tell anyone else the news. He had cut across the fields, taking shortcuts to carry out his errand. On the way, he had met Muthu in the fields and given him the message. In his excitement, Muthu had embraced and lifted Kaaraan up and said, ‘What wonderful news you have brought us!’ The man was embarrassed. ‘Saami! Please let go of me before anyone sees us.’ Muthu said, ‘All right. Come over to the house,’ and ran, leaping in joy. By the time Kaaraan reached their house, Muthu had already kept a dhoti, a towel and two rupees for Kaaraan. Offering these to him, Muthu had said, ‘Is this enough?’ Kaaraan had been beside himself with joy. He then had his lunch with them there and left with them in their cart. Before Kaaraan had parted ways with them, Muthu had asked him to find a woman labourer to help Ponna and Seerayi with the work in their field.

  Thena Paatti asked for some betel leaf and nut, and chewing a mouthful of them, she said, ‘Everything will go well. Ponna will have a good delivery and she will raise the child well. Anyway, we are all here to help. Please send for us if you need anything. We will come and cook delicious meals for her. If the same person does all the cooking all the time, it becomes monotonous. There will be some variety if different people make even the same dish.’

  ‘Make sure you inform the village council of this news,’ Thorattu Paatti said. ‘Even I forgot about it.’

  That was when Muthu heard about the custom. If a woman is pregnant when her husband is dead, the village council had to be informed. There would be an elaborate ceremony, beginning on the day of the dead husband’s final rites, when the entire village would gather. Once the funeral procession returned home from the cremation grounds and finished the prayers at home, a barber would stand at the entrance to the house and set down a pitcher full of water next to him. The wife would come to that spot still clad in the wet sari in which she had her bath and touch and pay respects to the pot of water. Then the barber would speak loudly: ‘I have some news to share in this gathering of close kinsmen, uncles, brothers-in-law, other people of the caste, and of the village. The thing is that this woman who married on such-and-such a date and now stands clad in white, her husband—who was so-and-so’s son, who is from such-and-such a place, from such-and-such a field—departed for the other world on such-and-such a time on such-and-such a day, my lords. On this day, when we are offering our prayer so that he should not face any obstacles on his path to god, his chaste wife stands here to inform the village that he has left behind a foetus in her womb. They calculate that it has been so many months and so many days and the foetus is so-much old. They might be ten or twenty days off the mark, but those are god’s calculations. Since she is going through the unbearable sadness of the loss of her husband, I, as a member of this community, standing in front of this council, am informing everyone of it on her behalf, my lords. All of you should receive this news without making any untoward comments, my lords.’

  He would deliver that speech loudly so that everybody could hear. Then, an elder from the village would respond on behalf of everyone else: ‘All right. We accept this information. Now carry on and do what needs to be done.’ Then, a married woman would walk towards the widow—who, till that moment, would be standing there, hands folded and head bowed—and lead her into the house.

  The rationale behind this custom was to prevent anyone from saying later that she managed to get pregnant after her husband’s death. If they did not know until after the final rites that the wife was pregnant, the custom was to still inform the village council. They would have to ask the village headman to call for a meeting, and a person from the family had to go and stand in front of the gathering and make the news known. Otherwise, the council would excommunicate the family. Only after the paatti reminded them about this did all of them realize that the custom needed to be carried out. They had forgotten because it had been quite a long time since such a situation had come about. After they consulted the village headman and decided on a date for the meeting, they had to send someone to inform everyone about it. At the meeting, when the news is shared, close kinsmen have to be present. Kali was an only child. So was his father and even his grandfather. So there was really no one within the village who could be called his immediate kinsman.

  But there were families in the village who could be considered close kin. According to custom, Seerayi had to personally go and inform all these close relatives and also the entire village. So Muthu said to her, ‘Atthai, you first go and speak to the village headman. Take my father with you. Once we know when the village council meeting will be, we can go in the morning to all the close relatives and invite them personally. You will have to go. I don’t mind going, but if I do, they will ask how a brother-in-law could be sent to do that.’

  Seerayi thus set out with Muthu’s father to meet the village leader. Thorattu Paatti said, as she walked out with them, ‘The purpose is to let the village know that this foetus was conceived when the husband was still alive. That the wife did not get this by going to some random man.’

  Ponna overheard that remark. After her sister-in-
law finished combing her hair, Ponna went to the cot and lay curled up. All the affection she had felt for Kali earlier that day had now dried up. Kali had put her in a demeaning situation where she had to stand in front of the entire village and declare: ‘I slept only with my husband.’ What would the village do if she were to say, ‘This child is not his. I slept with a stranger’? Kali had visited her the night before and spoken sweet words of love. What would he do tonight? Would he come to her rescue, seeing how she had to stand and defend herself in front of the villagers? Ponna felt that Kali would perhaps continuously torment her even in his death. She did not know how to let go of him.

  Ponna lay face down on the cot, crying. Vallayi came to her, touched her gently on the head and consoled her, ‘Don’t lie on your stomach, my dear. You should only lie on your side from now on. Don’t cry. It is our fate that we have to endure all this. Think of it as fate. He is gone, but we have to live on. And we can’t do that if we antagonize the entire village, can we? All you need to do is go and stand there.’

  Ponna got up and turned to lie on her side. Poovayi, her sister-in-law, said to Vallayi, ‘I will be with her. You go.’ She then said to Ponna, after the old woman had left, ‘Why are you crying? You should not cry when you are with child. All of us are standing by you. Why do you have to worry then? The village has certain customs. What do they know of how much these things hurt us women? If he knew of the humiliation you would have to endure going and standing there in front of everyone, would he have killed himself? But then, it is not as if men who are alive and well understand women’s miseries either. Don’t think too much about these things. If the custom demands it, just get it done. How many temples you have visited, how many prayers you have offered—thousands of them. And all of those have borne fruit now. Remember that and hold on to that happiness in your heart. If this didn’t happen, you would have had to be all alone. A brother or a father can support you only so far. But you now have someone to call your own. Think about that and be happy. If we take on everything as a struggle, it would be nothing but struggles all the way.’