BY PURASU BALAKRISHNAN

(Translated by the author from his original Tamil story)

Ambujavalli was sitting in the court-yard of the house, picking stones from the black-grams which had been bought from the bazaar. She was an elderly woman, but even in her faded features one could discern that she had had her share of beauty in days gone by. The freshness of youth, which lingered on her, enveloped everything around her in a wistfulness. The silent court-yard looking towards the sky, the cow visible outside through the open back-door, and even the well near by which seemed anxious to say something to its constant friend the water-pot, all partook with her of a departing beauty which was trying to remember itself. In the darkening sky overcast with heavy clouds, and in the rocking trees seen through the back-door, everything was expectant of rain.

"It’s going to rain now," reflected Ambujavalli. "One would think that it was waiting for me to begin making appalams ¹…..But what a fool I am! God alone knows whether the marriage will take place at all. And here I am, already making appalams……People are not so ready to marry poor girls…..What they want is money…..only money….."

A gust of cool wind blew into the court-yard through the door, bringing with it the thrill of the coming rain. Ambujavalli looked up at the sky, in the middle of her work.

"Who wanted the rain today?" she asked herself. "I wonder when he will return. I hope he won’t be caught in the rain.’

As it was threatening to rain any moment, she collected the black-grams in a vessel which she had by her side, and rose to go in. Just then a young girl of fourteen entered through the door, carrying in her hands some copper and bronze vessels which looked bright and burnished. Her hands and fore-arms and the edges of her saree were wet from cleaning them.

"Mother," she called, as she stepped into the yard, "I’ve finished cleaning the vessels. May I go the temple? Angaraipatti ² is waiting for me."

"Oh no, Pattu!" cried her mother, "You must not!" She looked up at the sky, and Pattu, following her, did likewise.

"Look, it’s going to rain now."

Pattu was what her mother might have been at her age. Sometimes one beholds a sombre sky, weighed down with clouds; soon a happy shower metamorphoses the grey into a blue; and a mild sun smiles cheerily, waking the wet and sparkling earth to youth; and the air is sweet with the scent of the rain, and the quarters of the sky are resplendent. Looking at Ambujavalli and Pattu, one was reminded of the grey sky and earth, and of the after-shower freshness and exhilaration. Ambujavalli was bound to Pattu, not only as a mother to a daughter, but as the mind to memory. It was perhaps because of this subtle tie between them that Ambujavalli called her Pattu, although her real name was Visalakshi.

"No, mother, I must go," replied Pattu gaily. "The temple is not far from here….And if it rains–well, I should like to I get wet a little!….Oh yes, I love to get drenched!….It makes one so fresh, you know…..the bath in the rain…..and the wind blowing….."

"You are childish yet," Ambujavalli chid her. "Don’t make yourself ill when you are to get married."

"Oh, you needn’t worry about that," returned Pattu carelessly. "……Angaraipatti must have been waiting for me ever so long!" she cried, as she put the vessels in their places. Then she went out merrily, like a lamb, eager to draw in the breath of moisture from the wind and the rain. It was already quite dark, and Ambujavalli looked helplessly at her daughter who was going away with the freedom of a petted child.

"She’s a child yet," thought Ambujavalli. "But let her be like this….just like this…. How unbearable our poverty must have been, but for her! Without her gaiety, how the whole house would have been an unlit gloom!…." It was beginning to drizzle, and Ambujavalli came back to her former thought. "She has gone into the rain, without heeding my words…. What’s one to do, If one s chIldren are like this?….But, after all, she’s gone to the temple…. What if she went out for the rain? It’s all the same. She went to the temple. God cannot look unconcernedly on a girl who has gone to His temple in the rain…..She’s a child yet….." Ambujavalli’s anxious thoughts flitted into the future. "Will she get a husband who will understand her and treat her as she deserves?….." Ambujavalli had been thinking within herself so long, but now she began to speak aloud to herself. For she had touched upon a theme of which she had thought quite often, and which she had, after a time, come to acquire a conscious pleasure in uttering aloud. "People don’t know what a precious thing a child is," she discoursed to herself. "Nowadays girls are taught ever so many things at school and college. But not one thing they learn is worth a copper coin! What’s the use of all that learned stuff? Does it teach them how to live–how to bring up a child? Do they know what a precious gift from God a child is?…..They’ve lost all sense of values…..Not to know the value of a child is immoral….."

The wind moaned through the swaying branches, like a giant-child wakened untimely; and a loud thunder startled Ambujavalli.

"Goodness!" she thought, getting uneasy. "Pattu will surely be caught in the rain!…. How dark it has suddenly become!…..I wonder why he is so late coming back home. What could have been the matter?……He must have had a lot of trouble, though, today…..a lot of wandering…..Goodness knows how the matter would have ended……Thank God!" she heaved a sigh of relief, as she caught the sound of a bullock-cart outside the house. "He has returned home at last!" She ran almost breathless to the door. She had been anxious at the thought of both her husband and her daughter being out in the rainy night. But now, with her husband by her side, she was calmed, although her daughter was still away.

At the doorstep she was met by her husband Janakirama Iyer, who bore signs of the rain and the wind on his person. He was a tall, robust man, but his face revealed that he had seen too much of life and was even getting wearied of it.

"So I’m back home at last!" he said, heaving such a sigh that his powerful chest rose visibly and fell. He removed from his shoulders his angavastram which was wet with the rain; and wiping his face with it, he walked in. Ambujavalli followed him. At the same time, the bullock-cart was seen through the door of the court-yard, as it was being driven to the shed.

"What happened today" Ambujavalli began questioning him eagerly.

"Close that door, will you?" broke in Janakirama Iyer petulantly, without replying to her question. "Why do you have such a wind blowing into the house?"

Ambujavalli walked resignedly across the court-yard, not minding the drops of rain which fell on her. "You can go home," she said to the driver who peeped in just then at the door. When she found him anxious to get home soon, she remembered guiltily that she had allowed Pattu to go out in the darkness and rain that night. But….may not her marriage come off happily, as she had been so devoted, as she had gone to the temple even in the rain?…..

Ambujavalli closed the door and bolted it. Meanwhile, her husband had gone to his room to change his clothes. There was no lamp there, and yet he had gone in, probably to avoid her questions for some time. She took a lantern in her hand and entered his room anxiously. In her nervousness, as she held the lantern, the shadows in the room danced weirdly on the walls.

"Were you successful?" she questioned him timidly.

He did not answer her. She asked him twice again, but he remained silent. Thereupon she stood mutely by his side, waiting when he would begin talking himself…..Outside, the moan of the wind had abated a little, and the rain which had threatened had not yet begun. There was only a slight drizzle. Perhaps it might not rain for half an hour or even an hour. Within that time Pattu would probably be back home…….

"Where is Pattu?" began Janakirama Iyer at last, in a hoarse voice, sitting on a chair.

"She’s gone to the temple with Angaraipatti."

"Gone out?–In this wind and rain? Why did you allow her to go? One can’t teach people like you. You are fools."

"With a man like you, a woman may go out of her senses quickly enough. I asked you what news you brought from Kadalangudi, and you haven’t told me."

Janakirama Iyer had been both tired and vexed with his wanderings that day. Early in the morning he had started for the next village Kadalangudi. After being knocked about the whole day, he had been, in the end, caught in the rain, and had returned home quite late, after nightfall, and was certainly not in good humour.

"As if it requires to be told!" he ejaculated. "How can it end? How can anything end, except in money? What does the world exist for, except for money?…..You may send your daughter to the temple in the wind and rain, but nothing will come of it! Take it from me, nothing will come of it! The world worships only money! Leave the temple to the god, and mind money!–That’s what you’ll do, if you are wise!….I shall tell the stupid hag of the next house that she must not take Pattu with her to the temple hereafter. What business is that of hers?….Anyway Pattu’s gone to the temple today, and there’s no helping it….Well then, I shall speak aloud, now that Pattu is not at home! I shall tell you everything!"

Janakirama Iyer got up from his chair, took a book in his hands from the table without any necessity to do so, and began pacing up and down the room. His long shadow, falling on the floor and the walls, as he moved in the dim light of the lantern, produced an uncanny effect which curiously intensified his low-spoken words.

"I can talk aloud now," he repeated, but he spoke as though he were in fear. "When will she return?" he asked his wife in a whisper.

"She went out just now. It’ll take some time."

Though he had declared that he would talk aloud and had, in addition, taken the precaution of asking her when Pattu would return, he spoke but in a whisper which strangely resembled his own silent shadow on the walls. Ambujavalli, who had so long held the lantern in her hands, placed it on the table, as though she had become conscious of its weight in her anxiety. She poised herself with her hands against the table and stood ready to take in whatever her husband might say.

"Perhaps it is a sin," began Janakirama Iyer in a voice fraught with emotion, "but I’ve kept it to myself too long. It has been poisoning my mind. Now I’ll speak it out to you…..Sometimes I think that it is Pattu who has brought on us all our misfortune….."

A flash of lightning lit up the room, and Janakirama Iyer could see that Ambujavalli gave a gasp as though it had struck her.

"Yes," continued Janakirama Iyer, like one afraid of something, I’m a sinner and I’ve told you the truth. But I don’t blame Pattu for it. I blame only myself for it. I blame you and I blame God….."

He stopped beside the lantern and leaned on the table to steady himself.

"Yes, you are to blame for it," he repeated. "But for you, we wouldn’t have gone to Tirupati, we wouldn’t have gone to Rameswaram, we wouldn’t have gone to all the other sacred shrines…..We wouldn’t have fasted and prayed to God….."

Ambujavalli wished to tell him that God had indeed granted their prayer, but she had not the power or the courage to say it.

"God,…..prayer,……everything is a joke,……a mockery,……he went on. "We prayed for a child and got one. We got Pattu and we’ve been poor ever since. God played a joke on us….."

He paused as thunder rumbled in the sky. It appeared to proclaim to God a father’s resentment against Him spoken in a whisper in a dimly lighted room. He waited for the peal to die off and then he continued:

"I’m not saying this from my own point of view. No, I’m thinking only of Pattu when I say this…..We had money when we had no child. And when we got one at last, we had no money. What we had has dwindled and disappeared, like a mirage, through no fault of ours. It was utter poverty with us…..We prayed to God and He cursed us…..How empty and false turned all our hopes for Pattu! The little one cleans the vessels herself, like a servant-girl. That’s how we were able to bring her up….."

Suddenly the wind howled, and there was a noise of waters pouring from the clouds on to the earth. Ambujavalli got all anxious in a moment for the news of the day.

"Pattu will be back soon. Please tell me before she returns what happened today."

"In a home which was once a place of culture and ease, she grew up like a beggar-girl….And now we’ve no money to marry her with….You asked me what happened today? …..Well, what could have happened?…..Of course, people can talk nice words easily enough, and Krishnamoorti Sastrigal is one of the best among them. He professes a good deal, but what’s the use of words? He affirms he’s very particular about the alliance. He agrees that the horoscopes match excellently. In that respect I’m also eager for the marriage. But the money, the money, the money! Where am I to get the money for the dowry?"

Janakirama Iyer almost jumped and strode up and down the room excitedly.

"What could I do? 1 wandered all day long, and in the end I sold our lands…..Yes, I sold our lands which we had managed not to sell these ten years! I saw Krishnamoorti Sastrigal again. Now we’ve only to fix the date and the hour…."

"What a relief!" exclaimed Ambujavalli. "But why couldn’t you have told me this earlier?"

"We can only hope that she’ll receive the same love and tenderness from them as we bestowed upon her."

"We are in God’s hands!" cried Ambujavalli in a rush of joy."…..But why did you terrify me so? You settled the matter so well–so exceedingly well! And why couldn’t you have told me that at once?"

Janakirama Iyer’s voice was unsteady when he spoke.

"I’m a poor sinner," said he, "Or why should these thoughts have occurred to me?…. For ten years we went through poverty and struggle. And now we lose her too. And just to lose her, we lose all!….She leaves our house. Together with that grief, we must suffer also this chastisement…..Perhaps it’s my own sin……"

"What a lot you must have suffered today!" quavered Ambujavalli. "How good and thoughtful of you to have sold the lands immediately, without waiting to consider the matter with me!…..And having concluded the matter so well, my God, how you shook the life out of me!…Just to think what a family is Kadalangudi Krishnamoorti Sastrigal’s……"

At that moment a chill draught blew into the room. The door opened and Pattu entered, her saree dripping with the rain. Ambujavalli ran to her and drew her to herself.

"Pattu, Pattu," she sighed fondly. "How wet you are You look like having had a bath."

"That was what I wanted, mother," replied Pattu, smiling. "Oh, father has returned?"

"Yes," sobbed Ambujavalli. "Pattu, he has seen the young man’s father. So you’ll marry the young lawyer, won’t you?" Ambujavali spoke, and laughed, and gesticulated like a girl.

Janakirama Iyer stood near the table, watching them both. His eyes dwelt lovingly on the one and then on the other. An overwhelming affection for his daughter seized him.

"Pattu," he called her tenderly. She approached him, while her mother followed her.

Janakirama lyer, by nature, was not one, demonstrative in his affections. But he was quite overcome by his feelings for the moment. Embracing his daughter fondly, he said:

"Pattu, go and change your clothes, or you may catch cold."