Kali. Malti was a type these villagers had encountered doing charity work at the health clinic or coming to instruct them on birth control. She was normal height, fair-skinned, wore gold earrings and her sari, though simple, was clearly expensive. They had never seen anyone like Shivarani before. It was not only her height and dark complexion. She wore no jewels and her wrists were bare, though even the poorest village woman wore at least a glass bangle. Her hair was short like a man’s and, in fact, although she wore a cheap handloom sari, they could hardly tell if this was man or woman. Perhaps it is a hirja, they whispered to one another. Hirjas were people of indeterminate gender, who wore women’s clothes and had the voices of men. They were frightening people, who appeared at the birth of a baby threatening to curse the child unless they were given payment. Shivarani’s voice was nearly as gruff as a man’s as she boomed out her party’s promises of education, clean water, and food, housing and transport for all.
Meena was horrified, and when she met her eldest daughter would scold, ‘Once more you are stirring up trouble where no trouble was before. You should be at home, in the Hatibari helping with the preparations for your sister’s wedding, not rampaging round the countryside and hobnobbing with all these dirty villagers.’
As the day of her younger sister’s wedding grew closer a letter from her mother persuaded Shivarani to return to Hatipur.
‘Although I have never known you give way to envy, anyone might think you are jealous of your sister now, in her time of joy,’ wrote Meena. ‘The Kaurava family are already commenting on your absence. Please come back at once, Shivarani. The wedding takes place in two weeks and there is much to be done before that.’
Shivarani felt ashamed as she reluctantly made her arrangements to go home. She hoped she would be able to look at her sister, wearing the red sari of the bride, without her feelings showing.
She arrived in the village to find the whole place a buzz of action and expectation. All along the main street, silk, chiffon, gold zaree and shadow appliqué poured from the needles of the squatting darjees’ ancient Singer sewing machines. The air steamed with the breath of garlic, chillies and palm tree jaggery as ingredients for the wedding feast arrived on lorries. The rickshaw wallah, who usually was unable to stand the sight of Shivarani walking, no matter how often she refused him, now trotted past her, his face hidden under banana fronds, his carriage laden with the potted trees purchased from Dattapukur that were to decorate the wedding pandal. He did not even notice the towering, striding figure of Shivarani Gupta in her dusty sari and her hacked-off hair. The pandal itself was arriving too, a lorryload of acres of gaudy cotton stitched with mirrors and fringed with little silver bells and fifteen-foot bamboo poles to form the frame. The great wedding tent, when erected, would tower above the Hatibari, be more brightly coloured than the cinema posters of Dattapukur. It was going to look more realistically like a glittering palace than the most voluptuous set from a Bollywood movie.
As Shivarani passed the Hatibari on her way to her parents’ house, Pandu’s brother’s wife and Boodi Ayah were crouching on the verandah floor, arranging presentations for the bride. Gadhari looked up at Shivarani’s greeting. ‘I hope your sister is going to like these things, though in all the years that I have known her I have never seen her with a handbag once, let alone with fifty-three.’ She told Shivarani bitterly that their task was to artistically arrange a matching set of blouse, petticoat, slippers and handbag onto each of fifty-three plastic trays. ‘With no sides,’ complained Gadhari. ‘And the weather so hot that the sellotape will not stick.’
Shivarani stayed and helped for a while, struggling with the slippery plastic and the unruly silk and leather, while Gadhari muttered things like, ‘They never gave anything like this to me when I was married.’ And ‘What woman can make use of fifty-three pairs of chappals?’ And, ‘Wait till she gets pregnant, then what use will these little blouses be to her? To me it is a perfect waste but Kuru Dadoo has insisted.’
Outside, Gadhari’s sons shouted and laughed as they pedalled new trikes among the rose beds, while from an upstairs balcony their grandfather, Kuru Dadoo, watched them with pleasure. ‘He gave them the trikes yesterday, but he is going to regret it when all his precious rose bushes have been destroyed,’ said Gadhari.
When Shivarani left at last, Kuru Dadoo called out from his balcony, ‘Good afternoon Shivarani, we have a great day to look forward to, have we not? And when are you getting married, my dear girl?’ Shivarani felt her face grow hot as she hurried on.
Meena came running out. ‘At least you are come at last. One would think that the unknown peasant women are more important to you than your own sister. And don’t tell me you walked all the way here from the station.’
‘Where is Koonty? She must be feeling terribly excited. Only a week to go,’ said Shivarani.
‘She’s in her room. Go and see her. She’s been a bit mopey lately.’
Shivarani found Koonty sitting, listless and pasty, on the edge of her bed. The wall was tattered with the remnants of ripped paper, as though the cinema posters had been dragged off wildly. ‘I don’t like the cinema any more,’ said Koonty dully. Her hair was lank as though she had not brushed it. She did not get up. And Shivarani, instead of feeling pleased that her sister had grown out of the frivolous stage and might now be about to take an interest in more serious things, felt worried.
‘What is wrong with her?’ she asked Meena later. ‘Has she been ill, or something?’
‘There is nothing wrong at all,’ said Meena. ‘Koonty is, as is to be expected, feeling somewhat apprehensive about the coming ceremony, which is due to be quite the biggest event this village has seen since the marriage of the old zamindar and at which very much will be required of her. I myself was rendered unconscious several times over during my own wedding and I was only marrying into a middle-income family, though of unfortunately large genes. So you may imagine how it must be for your sister. Also she is behaving, at last, with the dignity of a woman who is about to become the bride of the zamindar though you, with your cavortings round the villages, would not know anything about proper behaviour.’
‘Ma must be right,’ thought Shivarani, but all the same could not get from her mind that there was something more wrong with Koonty than dignity or apprehension.
After a while Meena admitted that Koonty had been depressed ever since the day she lost the golden jewel that Pandu had given her. ‘Even after I told her, don’t worry about that, for at the wedding she will be given a hundred times as much gold and that I am sure the young zamindar will not be angry but will give her another if he comes to know of the loss, she has not been made happy.’
‘Koonty is forever losing things. The last time I was here she had mislaid the sovereign piece that the zamindar had given her and she didn’t seem to mind a bit. You were the one who was furious,’ protested Shivarani.
‘Then there was the episode at the river,’ went on Meena. ‘When you were away she tried to rescue a kitten, or so we think, though she will not talk about it. However, it seems that the creature was carried away by the current and it is from that time that Koonty seems to have suffered from a lowering of the spirits. Perhaps you can talk to her and see if you can find the source of the trouble.’
Shivarani managed to persuade Koonty to come out of her room and be measured for a blouse to go with her wedding sari. Koonty emerged unsteadily and stood passive while Shivarani wound the tape measure round her body. ‘I think it’s stupid to be making more blouses,’ she said. ‘Considering how you told me they are sending me fifty-three new ones, stuck to trays with sellotape, from the Hatibari.’
‘Keep still,’ said Shivarani, her mouth full of pins. ‘Are you looking forward to the wedding?’
‘Yes,’ said Koonty in a voice that made it sound like ‘no’. Her thoughts seemed far away.
‘Why do you keep staring at the river? Can you see something there?’
‘No reason,’ said Koonty and looked down at her feet as though the question frightened her.
‘Do you know what happens on the wedding night?’ she asked.