The Bride Waits

(A Short Story)

I

C. Subramania Sastri was a Sub-Inspector in the Salt and Abkari Department of the Government of Madras. In those spacious days the salt department was something like a joint Hindu family and the humiliating distinction of provincial and imperial was not known.

After a penal term of five years in the malarial districts of cuddapah and Kurnool, Subramaniam was just then being smiled on by fortune in the fertile Salavedu range of the Arni Circle. And Salavedu was a coveted range for the fine ‘extras’ it yielded on a generous scale. Indeed the Sub-Inspector of Salavedu was a little Rockefeller to the starving local republic.

Salavedu is an immense plain on the arid level tract from Acharapakam to Wandiwash, and truly has the parental air of great battlefields. Wherever the soil is a trifle fertile fed by some jungle stream, the palmyra grows in splendid clusters darkening the horizon. Palmyra is the true-born of the sandy plains of South India and the darling of the abkari department. It is a source of revenue to the mighty Government of Madras and the humble abkari Sub-Inspector. It yields to the tapping hand of the government three rupees a tree, and to the patting hand of the Sub-Inspector one anna, with an one-fourth share therein allotted to the legion of six peons who worry the soul of gramanies, ¹like a troop of wild ants in the bosom of a loaf of brown bread.

C. Subramania Sastri’s entry into the salt department was one the tricks of Providence. He came of a very distinguished family of Sanskrit pandits who had won renown by origmal excursions into Vedantic lore, in the shape of commentaries, and also enriched their lives by many yagams. ²Dialectics was in his blood like juice in grape or sugar in sugarcane and Subramaniam would have made freely his mark as a great pandit.

But according to the Time-spirit of the early seventies he was put to English education. He was a student of the Madras Christian College and one of the early batch who studied Shakespeare under the Rev. William Miller. He imbibed the spirit of Shakespearian tragedy so well at college that he used to recite ‘To be or not to be’ with dry and solemn majesty, his eyes twinkling the soul’s misery in the salt department, whenever he failed to balance his own budget or to adjust some intricate arithmetic of an arrack shop, dreading all the while of the black mark that would impede his Promotion, from rupees thirty to forty per mensem, pending so long.

Subramaniam was a brilliant boy at college but had a serious attack of illness while appearing for the F.A., and he failed miserably in algebra. His convalescence, hastened by the nearness of the examination, quickened his insight into the psychology of Shakespearian character but worked disaster to the exact science of algebra and geometry.

Subramaniam had always felt that the inner call of his career and of his own inheritance of qualities was the call to the Bar. But after failure in F. A., ‘B.A., B.L.’ seemed impossible, for he had married early and God had already blessed him with two children, the eldest born a daughter. His inheritance was slender and his all-powerful elder brother had refused him any more supplies of money hard-earned from agriculture. Therefore, Subramaniam had to enter life leaving the sweet pleasures of further Shakespearian study and the dreams of a fine career at the Bar: he had a stentorian voice, and he thought that it was the ripest qualification for a successful advocate.

Subramaniam’s fellow tenant was a clerk in the excise department at Chepauk. He introduced him to his chief who, attracted by the comely, graceful and lance-like figure, and clear-shining Brahmin face of Subramaniam, appointed him to a clerk’s place. After three years of drudgery at the desk, and city life which his wife hated, he escaped one day to the wilds of the interior as a sub-pro-tem Sub-Inspector on the regimental scale of thirty rupees a month. Thanks to the one anna which the benevolence of the palmyra yielded, in spite of the malevolence of man, Subramaniam and Sundari, his wife, led a happy though not rich life till they came to Salavedu range, except of course for occasional storms in the domestic teacup which only made the flavour of life the richer.

II

‘Ah dear, you’ll never learn to trim the sails to the passing wind, risk the worm on hand to catch the big fish in the sea. If only you had promptly sent the two tins of ghee to the camp-clerk to the A.C. (the Assistant Commissioner), why, there would have been no transfer at all to arid Cuddapah and this waste of five years–what a loss! We should have saved by now really five thousand rupees, ready cash for Pattu’s marriage–two tins of ghee, what a magic change in our life!

Subramaniam bore bravely this indictment of him from his own partner, and slowly answered grinding his palms with a fine air of discontent.

‘Yes, you are right, Sundari. Two tins of ghee would have wrought a miracle five years ago. . . . and ghee, you know, is a holy gift to another according to our sastras. Only in his case it would have gone to soak and flavour a dainty dish of pilao.’ ³

What is the use of polished irony or bitter words when life’s rough ways have got to be trodden as they are found every day? You have to stoop a little even if you want to pick up a flower from the earth. You should learn these little arts of life, if only for the sake of our dear Pattu.’

‘Stoop till I’m trodden over, and my is broken, and I’m humbled to dust by fellows of yesterday who roam about as camp-clerks; no, not even for dear Pattu’s sake. What’s the urgency about Pattu’s marriage now? She can wait three years and more; a husband for her, God-anointed, will surely come like the ant that finds its way to the drop of honey. Sundari, we have made many beautiful things in life odious by the mere touch of our vile human hands. . . .’

‘You are as usual out on your philosophic nothing–but Pattu is completing twelve this Ani. ⁴. . . but that we are in this desert, the voice of social pressure and odium would have reached us long time ago. We should have married our Pattu even last year while at Cuddapah. She surely takes after me and it is perilous to keep her unmarried for a month longer: risk the happiness of our darling’s whole life by your laziness and lack of thrift.’

‘That is just what you propose doing now by your hastiness and extravagance,’ Subramaniam roared in a husky voice.

Subramaniam felt the revolt surging in his blood which was charged with the grained orthodoxy of fourteen generations. In some measure this instinctive revolt had its partial fulfillment in the choice of his vocation–the daily sour odour of toddy dilating the refined Brahmin nostrils of one who was ordained by the sastras to inhale daily the smoke of ghee burnt with the sacred arasam ⁵ twigs.

Under the powerful spell of English education and the cheap reprints of R. P. A., Subramaniam’s mind had already opened up new windows of thought. He had secretly cherished the thought of not making Pattu’s marriage a hasty eleventh-hour mess. Pattu would get her God-appointed husband in the fulness of time. The ripe plum in the tree: does it coo for the bird to come and peck at it? Let Pattu win her lord as in the old spacious days of Vedic India. But he thought that he must adopt a different line of action and argument to convince his wife, and began in a soft conciliatory tone, ‘Dear, you know best how we stand; we can’t manage the money to marry Pattu decently this year or even the next?’

‘What about the village lands in the grip of your elder brother? It does not yield us a bag of rice, a seer ⁶ of tamarind per year. Why keep it only to pamper your respectable anna ⁷ –sell it or mortgage it–

‘Sell it or mortgage it to whom? Anna is all in all in our village and near about–to raise a loan? that is impossible.’

‘What about the palmyra season? You were describing to me only the other day that this Salavedu range was a veritable silver mine, two thousand rupees extra per year; you promised even an abhishekam ⁸ to our Lord of the Seven Hills if no extra inspection of A.C or D.C. came off during the mining season, and if you were kept on to this place for three more years.’

‘But dear, nobody would lend us now on such uncertain credit.’

‘But somehow we should celebrate the marriage this year. If you give up your laziness for a moment and stroll round our district a tithe as carefully as you patrol these palmyra wastes, you will certainly be able to secure for darling Pattu a decent boy in the B.A., whom we may pay a thousand rupees on hand and for the balance undertake his education for the B.L.’

‘Dear, now you are certainly planning very ably this installment system; you have something of your father’s constructive skill.’ Her father was a well-known tout and vakil gumastha ⁹recognised to be the ablest hand at writing a plaint or an affidavit for weak causes.

This compliment of Subramaniam mollified Sundari a little, who took it seriously. She stood more at ease, with the left hand angling at the waist. And Subramaniam after a decent pause of responsive, eager, admiring look reconnoitered a little and ventured to begin, ‘It’s no doubt a good idea, yours, dear. But the palmyra season begins only in March and finishes by the end of July and the collections all come-in in driblets only towards the end of July or early in August, and you know the marriage season ends before it.’

‘Well, then,–’ Sundari began a fresh plan. ‘Let us send round our district ahead of us our Dorasu–’

"OurDorasu! you mean your brother Dorasu! What is he fit for, I wonder; I’m surprised that a sensible lady like you–’

‘He may not be good at cramming books and passing examinations but he is fit for collecting good horoscopes, and all say that he is a very plucky hand that way.’

‘But he is such a spendthrift, dear; who can trust him with silver? It will surely go either to coffee clubs or dancing girls. He will bill me first-class travelling allowance, waste his time and our money, and post us a few false horoscopes. We have had enough of him early in our lives at Madras. I’ll not have him on any account, not even for your asking.’

‘No wonder you talk like this. If it lay with you, you won’t have me even or our own dear Pattu, but spend your days pleasantly with these drunken fellows, your peons, in palmyra forests, under the shade of toddy-shops. Our Dorasu must act for us or tell me at once some one who will do well this responsible task, or I myself will go home and do the task as best as a woman can.’

‘I’ll think of it all and tell you next week.’ Subramaniam, a reverent student of Hamlet who scored the highest marks in Shakespeare, could never be surprised into decisive action.

‘Think of it! That means you are not going to think at all. We are already at the beginning of March and tomorrow you are going out on a long camp with the first batch of a hundred tapping applications–instead of horoscopes.’ Sundari was in an unusually perturbed state and showed such a decided fighting mood that it was clear she would carry her point.

C. Subramania Sastri reflected for a while penciling his finger and tapping it on his lips. With charm in his voice and sadness in his face he spoke, ‘Sundari, today you are in a very unreasoning mood; you speak as if I had no responsibility for Pattu’s marriage. Pattu is as much my daughter as yours. Money is not the only point now, there is yet another peril. The moment I apply for leave for my daughter’s marriage–even supposing I’m so lucky as to get it sanctioned by the A.C.,–I shall be surely transferred to a barren range; then you are off for ever from Salavedu and its silver mines. I hear already that the S. I. of Thular is intriguing for this range, ready with tins of ghee and a nice Bangalore saree. We shall on our return get only some station at the foot of the Javadi Hills–full of mosquitoes and malaria.’

Sundari was flaming red in the face. ‘There’s no end to your objections and arguments. I’ve known them so long. You are not the man to act. You can cast accounts and slave at the desk even when our home is on fire. I’ll wire for Dorasu. You may keep quiet at home drinking this cup of coffee and casting toddy accounts.’

‘Why, dear, you are becoming of late quite unreasonable about Pattu. Where is the need for hurry? Let her grow a little more into a perfect girl full of health and strength, and a mind that has grown to know itself and the glory of marriage.’

Sundari wasted no more words in reply to this confession of faith of a social reformer. She was long standing on the neli ¹⁰with a cup of coffee in her hand, as if she would part with it only after extracting a promise from her husband that he would make honest attempts at Pattu’s marriage this year. Now she got out of control, she flightily placed with a thump the lota ¹¹and pushed it angrily towards her husband as if it were a toy motor-car or a perambulator. Lotas, not blessed with wheels, go ill together with angry wives,–or husbands? It simply fell on its face in one mute act of worshipful protest both of Subramaniam and of Sundari, and of this domestic discord. The coffee flowed out in a clear black rill by the side of the S. I., and fell in a little cascade from the pial to the ground. And the lota span a little, and looked woe-begone like a badly hit spectator in a wrestling match.

Pattu was sitting in the open courtyard with an illustrated book, seeming intent on it but really interested in this conversation. Subramaniam now raised his eyes and gazed on her with proud joy, if only for the perfect rendering of facial outline and pigment of the skin that was all his own.

The flowing rill of coffee and the grinding protest of the lota decided the issue once for all. Indeed Sundari was never so rough or agitated all her life, and something unknown and mysterious to his rank Masculine must be the reason for this ire of the Eternal Feminine, and the urgency of Pattu’s marriage this year. He must gracefully yield hereafter. Such were the quick reflections with which Subramaniam watched the winding progress of the thin line of coffee which cascaded to the ground.

III

C. Subramaniam had not the full benefit of the palmyra season of the famous Salavedu range. That he had applied for leave for his daughter’s marriage got wind,–the salt sentinels of six blood hounds, what are they for if not to ferret out domestic secrets which have so intimate a bearing on their official fortunes? The toddy-shop renters, apprised of their good luck for the year of changing S. I.s in the midile of the palmyra season, withheld their mamools¹²to Subramaniam with the finest and most gracious of assurances of payment with the next batch of tapping applications. Still, thanks to the fate of energy and the driving power of need, Subramaniam had succeeded in collecting over five hundred rupees of exquisite silver and copper, in all stages of emaciated and over-thumbed currency whose relatively final haven of rest in this restless world is the toddy-shop.

Subramaniam tried another day another chance with Sundari, pleading that five hundred rupees would not cover even the cost of exploring for a son-in-law in the maze of villages in the Tanjore district, and that it was not yet too, late to cancel his leave and save Salavedu. But what dues a roving S. I., with no headquarters according to rules, know of the pulsing anxiety and the melancholy hours of an Indian mother over the marriage of her daughter before the social odium crashes into her ears like thunder, even if whispered in secret? Sundari finally clinched the matter by promising all her jewellery for a pledge, to be of course redeemed the next palmyra season. That was earnestness indeed, and no husband, thoughtful or otherwise, can afford to ignore such an offer of outstanding merit, if only for the sake of the refinements of his own nature.

So Subramaniam left Salavedu even with some gaiety on his matrimonial researches for his darling Pattu. Sometime ago his brother-in-law, for a remittance of rupees fifty, had secured four horoscopes, two being dilapidated old men out in the marriage market the third time, with known assets and unknown liabilities. With this precious load in his pocket diary, which was itself a clever chronicle of many imaginary inspections of shops and topes, Subramaniam with Sundari and Pattu arrived one cloudy morning in their village of Alangadu on the banks of the Cauvery.

Sundari had not been to Alangadu for over twelve years. Her vital problem, of course, was her sister-in-law who was as masterful as anna himself. She was quite a sterile country affair who burnt with jealousy at the sight of Sundari’s jewellery, her accomplished daughter and promising little boy. It was a joint family in which the elder, supported by an aged mother who believed in befriending the man on the spot, gave nil return of mesne profits year after year with perfect audacity to his younger brother.

For the sake of darling Pattu whose marriage no son-in-law would agree to celebrate in the wilds of Salavedu, she was prepared to put up with her sister-in-law quietly for a month. But on the very day of her arrival she had hints from her sufficient to get alarmed. ‘Supposing she declares for sheer malice in secret whispers to the gossiping widows of Alangadu that our grown-up and well-built Pattu had already come of age–red ruin will track our way if such a vile and false rumour were set afloat by her.’

So she spurred her husband to declare his position as S. I. of Salavedu with an extra income of two thousand a year, and one not to be trifled with. Of course Subramaniam did his best to indicate his adolescence in the august presence of his elder brother. Meanwhile Sundari prayed to her family God at Swamimalai that the critical month of Ani may pass smoothly and fruitfully, with a son-in-law to welcome home for Deepavali on a grand scale at Salavedu. How many requests in one prayer for one cocoanut? But the elephant-god Ganesha, still a bachelor, to whom all these prayers are addressed, is no match for these agile members of the fair sex.

IV

It was indeed a critical month for C. Subramania Sastri. He plunged heroically into his work on hand–after all he was by vocation a man of action,–only nobody can do two things at a time well–dispose of tapping applications as well as horoscopes. But he was practically an exile from his own district for over fifteen years, and did not know the nuances and modes of approach to its decadent but refined life. This refinement involves a complex code of diplomacy rivaled only by the tangled politics of Central Europe today. He knew ill the conventions and intricacies of the marriage market. Therefore he had to co-opt very reluctantly the eminently diplomatic services of his brother-in-law Dorasu, saturated in the cleverness and conventions of Tanjore. Dorasu took him in one whirlwind tour from station to station, exhausting the latest developments in theatre, and in musicians including of course some pretty dancing girls just budding into fame.

The day-time was used laboriously for the collection and scrutiny of horoscopes, and no two astrologers said the same thing. How could they in such a sublime subject and with so many stars speaking such a jargon!–and no stars care to tell their mystic tale of charm to the poor man-worm crawling on his belly. Really it appeared to Subramaniam that Pattu’s husband had not yet been born in the Tamil land. And no boy of twenty would care to think ofa girl unless his inheritance was doubled by that alliance–a rupee fetching a rupee, often a bad rupee fetching a good one.

V

C. Subramania Sastri’s five hundred rupees dwindled in these travels of search and researeh to rupees fifty, just enough to cover his retreat to Salavedu on the expiry of his leave. Three weeks of Ani had passed and Subramaniam had gained enough experience to know that one full palmyra season and its gains had to be sacrificed if ever his Pattu should get married. Odious it looked to his rational and cultured outlook on life–he was an apastamba,¹³–that marriage, the most sacred and beautiful institution of man, should have become such a d–d affair in the Tamil land, and to a government servant such an impossibility.

Subramaniam returned home just at break of dawn on the 25th of Ani. And Pattu was drawing the kolam¹⁴in front of the house in lines of exquisite grace and symmetry, matched only by her own beauty. She greeted her father with a tender and anxious smile; her eyes put the question as to her destiny which her tongue dared not. She stood lovely, gazing at her father, like a pomegranate bud in its ripening hour. Subramaniam’s heart sank within him as if changed to lead at this sight of gold.

His elder brother came out of the house and greeted him with a merry twinkle in his sly and far-seeing eyes. He often explained his own infertility that in this kaliyuga it was not worth while bringing forth children into this conflicting and cruel world. He placed a long official envelope in Subramaniam’s hands and said: ‘Suppu, don’t be angry with me or charge me with indifference. I’ve got ready all the hundred things needed for the marriage. Here are a fifty casuarina poles and three thousand keetu ¹⁵for the marriage pandal. I’ve husked thirty kalams ¹⁶ of paddy in a day. The cooks, the molakkaran ¹⁷everything is ready. Have you settled the Budalur boy? I think he would prove the best boy for our Pattu, though indeed somewhat above our status. Is’t the 31st of Ani, the wedding day you have fixed?’

The elder brother, a veteran in the field of life and the woes of others, used the utmost narrative skill in his speech, for he had already read the story of the marriage from the drooping face and the moist eyes of Suppu. And he had also had the official letter read out to him and translated in secret.

The office memo from the Arni Circle read as follows: -

Subramaniam, VI grade, S. I. of Salavedu Range has been transferred to Moolakkadu Range, Polur Circle. To join immediately on expiry of leave.

Yes, Moolakkadu, as its very name so deftly suggests, is at the foot of the Javadi Hills, full of deadly malaria and mosquitoes. The very mention of its name is enough to send a thrill of pain to any S. I., however chronic and listless be his share of life in the Salt and Abkari Department of the Government of Madras.

1 Shop renters.

2 Sacrifices.

3 Savoury dish of meat and rice.

4 Tamil month corresponding to June–July.

5 Peepul.

6 Weight equal to 3/5 lb.

7 Elder brother.

8 Ablutions to the Deity.

9 Lawyer’s clerk.

10 Pial

11 Cup.

12 Tips.

13 Ritual sect.

14 Decorations done with rice flour.

15 Thatches

16 Denotes a quantity.

17 Piper.