A Cheerless Wedding

(A STORY)

BY PURASU BALAKRISHNAN

(Translated by the Author from the original Tamil)

I find myself referring to my marriage thus…..One would suppose that there had been some discord in the matter. But nothing can be farther from the truth. There was no misunderstanding at all amongst us. Even I, the all important man– his Highness the bridegroom–had shown myself to be perfectly good-humoured and amiable.

In truth she who made my wedding cheerless was a little girl of ten. She was Padma, my wife’s younger sister.

We–my bride and I–were sitting gaily in the swing.

"The ladies may begin their songs," announced a Sastrigal in his buffalo-like voice–an amiable gentleman who had the delicious habit of mixing freely in all the women’s functions, the Swing, the Bride’s Play, the Merry Round, and what not.

"Alamu, girlie, come on with your song," said an old lady who, obviously, had a high notion of her grand-daughter’s talent.

"I’m having a cold for the last two days, granny." Replied Alamu.

"Doesn’t matter. Sing away," the old woman encouraged her. I feared that I might, at any moment, have to put up with those strains which could be sung only through the nose.

However, somebody was already saying, "Sampaham, come, let’s have your song."

"I’m not in my voice, sister," replied Sampaham. And then she began returning compliments to her sister, asking her to sing.

"Radha has a good voice. Why not she sing something?" somebody proclaimed Radha’s gift for our benefit.

"I can sing only to the ‘box,’¹ mother," replied Radha–and, oh dear, what a profusion of grace and gesture in uttering those few words!

"Are we going to have any song at all?" came a voice which clearly showed that the speaker belonged to the sterner sex.

"Sarada, nobody looks like singing. Come, you at least must."

"What shall I sing?" asked Sarada after some hesitation.

"At last!" I thought, "so it looks like coming to something after all."

"Sing Rama Pattabhirama."

"Oh, that song I never get all right, sister. Um-Hm!" Sarada shook her head finally.

"That’s where we are–Nobody will sing! There are so many women here–so many well-taught in music–so many who can entertain us–but none will! I’ll teach you all, I will!" said a little old man, and turning to a girl who sat by his side, he said: "Now let’s see, Padma–you will give us a song. You are a good girl, aren’t you?"

This little girl Padma was the younger sister of my wife.

Padma did not hesitate at all. She began her song without any nervousness or ado. Even when she tuned her voice, she appeared to me to be a remarkable girl. If she had taken her turn with the rest–an eleventh after ten–she would not have interested me as greatly as she did even at the beginning. But while the rest were tantalizing us variously with their excuses, this freedom of Padma from self-consciousness struck me at once favourably.

Till the moment she began her song I had been quite gay and lively. Till that very moment I had been smiling within myself over Alamu’s cold and Sampaham’s sore throat, Radha’s ‘box’ and Sarada’s jutka-horse-like restiveness. But the moment Padma began her song, all these thoughts vanished from my mind. What was left behind was not a void but something vast and vaguely sorrowful.

"In the plantations, ah," Padma began her song.

When she had just begun her song, I happened to look around me. I could see from their frowning faces that the human goddesses there had been displeased with Padma’s song.

"What a song to sing here!" came a woman’s voice from somewhere.

"One must know what to sing…….say, something about the swing," another opined.

But unmindful of these remarks, Padma’s song went on:

"In the plantations, ah, in the plantations!
There in the plantations are they,
Labouring till their limbs droop lifeless–"

When during the song she sang the words, "the Hindu women," a thrill ran through me; and when her voice rose quiveringly "oh for a remedy!" my mind trembled; and when still she went on, "like beasts in a mill, they are toiling and pining," I could scarce restrain the tears which gathered in my eyes.

Only in stories do we hear of halls of festival turning into houses of mourning. But actually that day, for me, the swing of mirth became the swing of melancholy……This was the first time that I had heard this song of the poet Bharati sung.

Unmindful of my feelings Padma’s song went on:

"Even now they are toiling somewhere far away,
In the midst of the southern ocean,
There in some friendless island,
In some lonely forest,
Our women are toiling,
In the plantations, ah, in the plantations!"

All my mirth, laughter and cheer were gone–fled somewhere. With this song the little girl Padma had taken my mind by storm.

In the middle of the song I turned a little towards my wife’s side to have a look at her. Her eyes were bright with the liquid lustre of tears. Was she also listening to the song for the first time like me, I thought. But then I said to myself, "No, how can that be? Is not Padma her sister? Will she not have heard Padma sing this song a good many times?" Be that as it may, my wife, as she sat by my side on the swing, was troubled; and her eyes were brimful with tears. . . . At last Padima’s song came to a close.

"What a song in the marriage-hall!" said some exasperated music-critic, "Could she not sing some of Tyagaraja’s kirtanams?" and he was vehement at the lack of taste displayed by this little girl.

"After all she is a child. What can she know?" replied the old gentleman who had made Padma sing. "she sang what she knew. Our learned ladies didn’t do even that."

As though roused by these words, one among those learned ladies who had gathered there began to sing straightway:

"On a swing bejewelled with gems
He swung O merrily!
O merrily, merrily he swung
On a swing bejewelled with gems!"

To do her justice, her voice was quite pleasing. But her song fell upon my ears like a piercing arrow.

 ¹ The harmonium.