Sunday 10.30 am
MADHU SWITCHED ON the computer in his spacious study on the first floor. He looked at the screen and read.
‘My Daughter’s Affair.’
That was the title of the novel written by Mrs. Indu Nair, a retired high school teacher engaged in literary pursuit. She has requested him for correcting the ms and commenting upon the story. The manuscript has 300 pages of A4 size.
SUVARNA THE HEROINE was a middle aged woman of beauty and substance. The central theme of the novel was heroine's anxieties and apprehensions about her beautiful daughter Shaalu’s love affair with a boy. The boy was eighteen and the girl seventeen, fire and wood, anything unwanted might happen. Nothing also could happen. Suvarna was worried. What would happen to her daughter if the affair went unchecked? How could she tackle her daughter and guide her away from a possible family tragedy? The core issue, she knew, was proper parenting.
Suvarna remembered her childhood and early adolescence spent in an orthodox Nair Tharavad (maternal ancestral home). She recalled the sexual exploitations by the elders of those days. How the Nambudhiris took advantages of young women in Nair homes. How uncles and cousins abused growing girls in the Tharavad.
Madhu went through several pages. He passed chapter after chapter with interest and concentration, of course with a critical mind. He almost covered one fourth of the book.
The telephone on the table rang loudly disturbing his concentration. He lifted the phone and listened.
“Good morning, uncle. This is Rasi. Can I speak to Max, please? His mobile is switched off.”
The voice was sweet and pleasing, no doubt, but irritated him. Why the hell should she call him at that time? He had admonished her that she should call Max only before 8.30 am and after 9.30 pm. But Rasi often forgot of his directive. In love, especially in teenage love, there was no law, no order, no time and no manner. That’s it. Bloody shit! But he did not show his indignation at her. After all what wrong has she done to him? She has always looked at him with daughterly affection and reverential fear.
“Rasi, he isn’t here. He’s gone to his friends’ house.”
“Ok, uncle. Thank you. I will get him there. I know them.”
Yea, she would get him! That’s the rule of Eve’s love. It was easier to break a love affair between two adults than between two teenagers. The entwined passion of teens could not be unwounded by anyone, not even by God. Look at the gods of Puranas. Lord Siva and beautiful Parvathy, Sri Krishna and lovely Radha…romantic royal lovers!
He concentrated on the screen.
The chapters of the novel as he read on were filled out with narration about the history of joint family.
‘Was that necessary for the body of the novel?’ Madhu asked himself, ‘Wouldn’t it mar the concentration of the story?’ He had his serious doubts. Never mind. Those were after all the Suvarna’s reminiscences. Nevertheless he wrote down his comment.
Earnestly Madhu moved onto the subsequent chapters. The heroine was entering the teenage. The first drops of blood dripping from her inside streaming on her legs shocked her. Her mother Kanthamma helped her to absorb her initial shock.
Author’s graphic description of puberty, pubic mount, pubic hair, vagina, urination, menstruation, Thirandu Kalyanam of girls etc through the flashback of the heroine made the reading very interesting and inciting as well. The lustful talks once done lavishly in the dark corners and shady corridors of the Tharavad but hushed up strictly, were told about openly in the circles of the adults. What were told out in the circles of young men and women were being lately written about in public, a salubrious change in the attitude and the writing style as well though the purists and the moralists had decried those writings as pornography at that time. He felt the pinch of erotica. However he felt that the words and sentences of the author put in the mouth of Suvarna could be more poetic and mellifluous than class-text-like.
Adolescence has always been a very crucial period in the life of boys and girls. It was the time of their emotional growth coupled with anatomical changes in their body. Suvarna remembered her own adolescent life lived out in the labyrinth of her Tharavad. The life of girls of fourteen to sixteen in a joint family of Kerala was very much constrained and restricted. Compared to the boys, the girls were the most silent sufferers. Often they were left alone to their dreams or to the girlish whisperings of their classmates. Who would talk to them about sex and hormonal changes? The fathers would never. Their mothers hardly would inform and educate them except on how to cope with the menstruation and bleeding. School teachers would never dare to mention about them. In those days sex was taboo, no see, no hear and no talk…
Madhu was glued to the computer.
Max came upstairs with Rasi. He did not greet his father. He not even looked at him.
“Hai uncle, how’re you?” Rasi greeted.
“Fine.” He responded automatically without taking eyes from the screen.
Max went inside his room. Rasi followed.
He heard the sound of the door being closed.
He also heard giggling, laughter and babbling. The whispering from the room slowly faded into telling silence.
He concentrated on the novel on the screen.
The author continued the narration of Suvarna’s girlish life. The narrative style seemed catching and gripping.
The heroine felt an urge and feeling for a boy in the neighborhood. He was studying in her class. Her inner itch and the sensual craving for him inflamed her body parts. She felt the sensual surges very sweet, sometimes sour and many a time as sedative as a lovely dream of him. She has several times visualized him naked. She had wanted to see his ‘thing’. That never happened in her dreams. She soon realized that one of her cousins has a crush on her. He visited the Tharavad frequently, wanted to be near her, very close to her, to touch her and hug her and fondle her. One day he caught hold of her unaware while she was in patthayapura looking for vessels. He kissed on her mouth and squeezed her budding boobs. His hand snaked down and sneaked through her under skirt to her mount searching for her valleys and springs. She bit his hand and escaped from his clutches. Another day while she was taking bath alone in the family pond, he crept in, stripped her naked, pushed her onto the sand bank and mounted on her. He held her tightly under his weight and placed her hand over his bulged thing and masturbated. He emptied himself on her thighs. They lay quietly for a while, he out of exhaustion and she from shock. She had at first felt about holding his thing pleasant and pleasing, then outrageous and debasing. She could do nothing but cry at that time. She didn’t dare to reveal even to her mother. She hated him for that. She hence deliberately evaded him…
“The lunch’s ready. Come and eat” Wife shouted from kitchen below.
After a while the call for eating was repeated loudly.
The door was opened. Max and Rasi came out of the room.
Madhu looked at them. They seemed excited. They were hale and hearty, hay and gay all over.
“Daddy, don’t you come for eating?”
“No. I’m not hungry.”
They went downstairs to the dining hall.
What were they doing inside? Praying together? Playing games? He did not know. His wife did not know. Did gods know?
When he had designed and built his house he had planned and construed a fully furnished large room with attached bath and dressing room for his only begotten son with all the facilities so that in future he and his wife could comfortably live therein. But he had admonished him that the room was strictly a private one and he should not allow anyone to enter his room. He had asked him not to bring in his classmates or friends. Visitors and friends were to be entertained in the spacious sitting room or in the guest room on the ground floor. He has warned him not to turn his room into a love-nest. Son kept the word and followed the directive till he completed his Pre University Course.
One day he brought in his intimate friend Vinod and took him to his room. Another day a gang of his classmates invaded his room. Then girl friends of the classmates followed. They then began to partying for hours during the night.
Madhu protested and objected.
“Daddy, what’s the wrong in taking my friends into my room? They let me into their room. We need space for us. We are no more kids. We know what we do. We are not in your time.” He shouted at him. The wife supported the son.
“Man, your ideas are out dated. Your thinking is out of time and place. He’s a grown up boy. They need their private space.” She had said.
He kept his mouth shut and pondered. His was a love marriage. His was late marriage, son a latecomer. He was now on the middle of sixties. The age difference between father and son was over forty. How long his journey would be? Another ten years? Would he ever see his grandchildren? He had no such dream or hope. It was his son’s life and up to him to mould it. He has brought him up in absolute freedom with responsibility. He has been trained in the art of being responsive and responsible. He has become major. Why should he so much bother about his son? Why should he worry about his conduct? He should be prudent. He should be diligent. No more room for internal fight and bickering at home. He knew he was now a spent-up force, an old dog.
He looked at the screen. Three fourth of the novel has been over.
The Suvarna’s elder sister Sujatha has completed her graduation. Marriage proposals flooded the Tharavad. Many a boy came to see Sujatha. All of them preferred the younger to the elder. The younger was seventeen and just passed S.S.L.C. Sujatha got the wind. She resigned and withdrew from the Pennukaanal custom and paved way for her sister Suvarna. Sujatha told the family that she was only happy about pursuing higher studies. Eventually Suvarna’s date was fixed. Thence she was looked upon as a woman, no more a teenage girl. More restrictions were imposed on her. She noticed attitudinal change in the elders towards her.
‘The first night will be the most beautiful and the most blissful. The first wedding night would be remembered by the couple for the life.’
The elders of the house and her friends of the locality conspired to her on the eve of the marriage. Her aunties and uncles sometime jokingly hinted at the agony and ecstasy of the wedding night. They did not give her any clues. Her mother revealed nothing. Her father was hardly seen around. Her grandma Savitri whispered to her ears while she was giving her a ceremonial bath on the eve of marriage:
“Ente Kuttee, listen carefully, the boy will hold you, touch your breast, stomach and below your abdomen. He may explore in between your legs where you urinate. Don’t be ashamed of anything. Don’t be afraid of him. Don’t get panic. Allow him to do whatever he wanted. He will put his thing inside you. For the first few times you will have acute pain and bleeding. Do not mind. Gradually you will feel sukham. In the end there will be Maha sukham. Your grand father made me like coconut chammanthy. He enjoyed eating me till I lost senses.”
Grandma’s rustic dialogue confused her. It really perplexed her. It was like a pistol shot warning. What was the gist of the ‘first night’? What was lovemaking? What were the intricacies and the interplays of the nightly game? Nobody had ever explained to her what would happen after all the colorful ceremonies and rituals got over.
Suvarna recalled her first night. She got bruises over her lips, boobs and vagina. She suffered his weight. She endured pain, inflammation and irritation in between her legs. She disliked salty taste of sweat and semen on her mouth and face. She had felt vomiting. The blood smeared over the bed sheet. A kind of sticky and messy liquid was dripping from her inside. She was sandwiched and minced till the clarion call. The naked body of the boy was on her. He was in deep slumber. For fear of kith and kin she never opened her mouth. She cried in silence and sobbed. Sukham was nowhere else.
The Suvarna did not know a thing about virginity, hymen and semen, intercourse, orgasm, conception and contraceptives. Kaamasashtram was not taught in the schools. Kaamasuthram was not conveyed from mouth to mouth. The elders never explained the art of Kaamakeli.
The author Indu Nair has narrated the experiences and the expectations of the heroine in simple and plain words. Perhaps, he thought, Suvarna must be the author herself! He immediately dismissed the thought as such kind of thinking might be prejudicial and wrong as well.
MAXI AND RASI came upstairs after the lunch. Max retired to his room. Rasi religiously followed him.
Madhu wanted to finish the first reading.
Suvarna delivered two daughters within two years of her marriage.
Since the husband was an employee of Central Government he got transferred all over India. She and children followed him from Palaghat to Madras, then to Calcutta and then to Bombay and then to New Delhi and finally to Bangalore.
Suvarna recollected that her husband has not been very helpful to her during the early formation period of their children, from infancy to puberty. The family’s vagabond life added to her misery. Husband believed in and held that the affair of conceiving, delivering, rearing, nursing, nurturing was the work and duty of the wife. He was only the provider for the needs of the stomach and of what was below the stomach.
Suvarna learned more from personal experience than from the text books. Her children grew up. The elder one Sanju was docile and temperate. The younger one Shaalu was rebellious and assertive. Suvarna discovered sooner than later that Shaalu was missing classes. She was loosing grades. She was often disappearing for hours into her room. She became late-going to the college and late-coming home. One day Suvarna got her shock of life. The truth came out of Shalu’s mouth. She was having an affair with a senior boy and they were spending time together in city parks and theaters.
Suvarna questioned. Shaalu answered adequately. Her answers seemed rational and logical. But her reasoning and logic clashed with her father’s temper and temperament. He exploded at the children. He beat them. He put them under house arrest. Their route map was fixed, from house to the college and back to the house. No roaming, no outing and no cinema without parents. He would not listen to their pleading. He would not compromise with the changes that were taking place in the permissive society in and around the city of Bangalore.
SUVARNA SEEMED CAUGHT UP in between the devil and the sea. She wanted to convey her daughters all about the female anatomy, girl-growing, love, lust, sex, virginity, dating, marriage, intercourse, mating, hymen, semen, conception, birth control, contraceptives, abortion, delivery, motherhood etc and etc before they got hold of such information from foul mouths and yellow literature. She was liberal with the children. She was lenient towards them. On the other hand her husband an orthodox Brahmin was conservative and authoritarian. He imposed new restriction on them. She was very much afraid that the children would explode and the traditional and familial bonds between them would be broken irreparably. She did not know how to go about it? Where to start and how to start?
Madhu was curious to know how the heroine solved her enigma, how she got over her worries and anxieties.
Suvarna already a matured woman tempered and tested by the time spoke to her husband slowly but steadily without hurting his ego. For the children she used the stick and the carrot as well. She finally spoke to them like a friend. She apologized to them for her husband’s sake. The children responded positively. They, like a team, discussed the issues burning within their heart. Like a devoted and responsible mother he admonished Shaalu to cut off her affair with the boy before he could cut into her belly. She suggested her to concentrate on the studies for the time being and wait for some more years for the marriage with her lover. She also advised the younger one to challenge the boyfriend for his fidelity towards her. She conceded to her daughter’s friendship with the boy.
Suvanrna pleaded, “Look, children, you are grown up and still growing. You have a long way to go before you get settled as per your aspirations and ambitions. Remember. We are not in Palaghat any more. We won’t be going back to our Tharavad. You won’t be getting married to Nambudhiris or to your murachekkans. But we are not in New York or London. I give you freedom which I never had in my life. Be responsible and responsive.”
Sanju soon realized the gravity of the situation and toed herself behind her mother. After heated arguments of several days Shaalu also took her mother’s advice.
It was a happy denouement!
Madhu sighed.
The door was opened. Max and Rasi emerged from the room fresh and fragrant with powder, perfumes and deodorant.
“Daddy, I will have to drop Rasi. It’s 5.30 pm. It’s getting late. I’ll come back within an hour.”
Madhu glanced at them.
Max appeared robust and virile. Rasi seemed happy and contended. He was twenty and she was eighteen, a graduate finale and a PUC finale, a Christian boy and a Punjabi girl.
Madhu observed Rasi’s T-shirt missed two buttons below her neck revealing her frontal cleavage and her lips swollen and colorless.
“Good night, uncle.” She said. He said nothing. They left hurriedly downstairs.
He did not respond. He could not respond. He would not respond.
Suddenly he felt he needed a walk and a stiff drink.
Notes:
Nair = One of the Hindu sub-castes
Tharavad = Ancestor’s home on maternal side
Nambudhiris = Brahmins
Thirandu Kalyanam = A celebration by a Hindu family of its daughter attaining puberty - the first menstruation. It indirectly tells the relations and neighbours that the daughter is marriageable.
Pennukaanal = Meeting the girl and her family by the boy and his family. If the boy or the family does like her, the marriage is on, otherwise off.
Ente Kuttee = My darling
Maha sukham = Great bliss. Maiden Orgasm
Kaamasashtram = Sexology, science of love and sex
Kaamasoothram = techniques of sexual play and lovemaking
Kaamakeli = sexual games
Murachekkan = cousins who have right to marry their nieces
Coconut chammanthi = pickle made out of gyrated coconut, green chilly, salt and ginger
Joseph Kaval is a freelance writer since 1960. He writes both in English and Malayalam his mother-tongue. He writes essays, criticisms, book-reviews, short stories and novels. He has published so far 200 short stories and five novels. He conducts classes on creative writing for college students. He edits and publishes Katha Kshetre an international literary quarterly in English from Bengaluru since 1999. Contact: joseph.kaval@gmail.com or kathalok@vsnl.net. Visit: www.josephkaval.webs.com
MADHU SWITCHED ON the computer in his spacious study on the first floor. He looked at the screen and read.
‘My Daughter’s Affair.’
That was the title of the novel written by Mrs. Indu Nair, a retired high school teacher engaged in literary pursuit. She has requested him for correcting the ms and commenting upon the story. The manuscript has 300 pages of A4 size.
SUVARNA THE HEROINE was a middle aged woman of beauty and substance. The central theme of the novel was heroine's anxieties and apprehensions about her beautiful daughter Shaalu’s love affair with a boy. The boy was eighteen and the girl seventeen, fire and wood, anything unwanted might happen. Nothing also could happen. Suvarna was worried. What would happen to her daughter if the affair went unchecked? How could she tackle her daughter and guide her away from a possible family tragedy? The core issue, she knew, was proper parenting.
Suvarna remembered her childhood and early adolescence spent in an orthodox Nair Tharavad (maternal ancestral home). She recalled the sexual exploitations by the elders of those days. How the Nambudhiris took advantages of young women in Nair homes. How uncles and cousins abused growing girls in the Tharavad.
Madhu went through several pages. He passed chapter after chapter with interest and concentration, of course with a critical mind. He almost covered one fourth of the book.
The telephone on the table rang loudly disturbing his concentration. He lifted the phone and listened.
“Good morning, uncle. This is Rasi. Can I speak to Max, please? His mobile is switched off.”
The voice was sweet and pleasing, no doubt, but irritated him. Why the hell should she call him at that time? He had admonished her that she should call Max only before 8.30 am and after 9.30 pm. But Rasi often forgot of his directive. In love, especially in teenage love, there was no law, no order, no time and no manner. That’s it. Bloody shit! But he did not show his indignation at her. After all what wrong has she done to him? She has always looked at him with daughterly affection and reverential fear.
“Rasi, he isn’t here. He’s gone to his friends’ house.”
“Ok, uncle. Thank you. I will get him there. I know them.”
Yea, she would get him! That’s the rule of Eve’s love. It was easier to break a love affair between two adults than between two teenagers. The entwined passion of teens could not be unwounded by anyone, not even by God. Look at the gods of Puranas. Lord Siva and beautiful Parvathy, Sri Krishna and lovely Radha…romantic royal lovers!
He concentrated on the screen.
The chapters of the novel as he read on were filled out with narration about the history of joint family.
‘Was that necessary for the body of the novel?’ Madhu asked himself, ‘Wouldn’t it mar the concentration of the story?’ He had his serious doubts. Never mind. Those were after all the Suvarna’s reminiscences. Nevertheless he wrote down his comment.
Earnestly Madhu moved onto the subsequent chapters. The heroine was entering the teenage. The first drops of blood dripping from her inside streaming on her legs shocked her. Her mother Kanthamma helped her to absorb her initial shock.
Author’s graphic description of puberty, pubic mount, pubic hair, vagina, urination, menstruation, Thirandu Kalyanam of girls etc through the flashback of the heroine made the reading very interesting and inciting as well. The lustful talks once done lavishly in the dark corners and shady corridors of the Tharavad but hushed up strictly, were told about openly in the circles of the adults. What were told out in the circles of young men and women were being lately written about in public, a salubrious change in the attitude and the writing style as well though the purists and the moralists had decried those writings as pornography at that time. He felt the pinch of erotica. However he felt that the words and sentences of the author put in the mouth of Suvarna could be more poetic and mellifluous than class-text-like.
Adolescence has always been a very crucial period in the life of boys and girls. It was the time of their emotional growth coupled with anatomical changes in their body. Suvarna remembered her own adolescent life lived out in the labyrinth of her Tharavad. The life of girls of fourteen to sixteen in a joint family of Kerala was very much constrained and restricted. Compared to the boys, the girls were the most silent sufferers. Often they were left alone to their dreams or to the girlish whisperings of their classmates. Who would talk to them about sex and hormonal changes? The fathers would never. Their mothers hardly would inform and educate them except on how to cope with the menstruation and bleeding. School teachers would never dare to mention about them. In those days sex was taboo, no see, no hear and no talk…
Madhu was glued to the computer.
Max came upstairs with Rasi. He did not greet his father. He not even looked at him.
“Hai uncle, how’re you?” Rasi greeted.
“Fine.” He responded automatically without taking eyes from the screen.
Max went inside his room. Rasi followed.
He heard the sound of the door being closed.
He also heard giggling, laughter and babbling. The whispering from the room slowly faded into telling silence.
He concentrated on the novel on the screen.
The author continued the narration of Suvarna’s girlish life. The narrative style seemed catching and gripping.
The heroine felt an urge and feeling for a boy in the neighborhood. He was studying in her class. Her inner itch and the sensual craving for him inflamed her body parts. She felt the sensual surges very sweet, sometimes sour and many a time as sedative as a lovely dream of him. She has several times visualized him naked. She had wanted to see his ‘thing’. That never happened in her dreams. She soon realized that one of her cousins has a crush on her. He visited the Tharavad frequently, wanted to be near her, very close to her, to touch her and hug her and fondle her. One day he caught hold of her unaware while she was in patthayapura looking for vessels. He kissed on her mouth and squeezed her budding boobs. His hand snaked down and sneaked through her under skirt to her mount searching for her valleys and springs. She bit his hand and escaped from his clutches. Another day while she was taking bath alone in the family pond, he crept in, stripped her naked, pushed her onto the sand bank and mounted on her. He held her tightly under his weight and placed her hand over his bulged thing and masturbated. He emptied himself on her thighs. They lay quietly for a while, he out of exhaustion and she from shock. She had at first felt about holding his thing pleasant and pleasing, then outrageous and debasing. She could do nothing but cry at that time. She didn’t dare to reveal even to her mother. She hated him for that. She hence deliberately evaded him…
“The lunch’s ready. Come and eat” Wife shouted from kitchen below.
After a while the call for eating was repeated loudly.
The door was opened. Max and Rasi came out of the room.
Madhu looked at them. They seemed excited. They were hale and hearty, hay and gay all over.
“Daddy, don’t you come for eating?”
“No. I’m not hungry.”
They went downstairs to the dining hall.
What were they doing inside? Praying together? Playing games? He did not know. His wife did not know. Did gods know?
When he had designed and built his house he had planned and construed a fully furnished large room with attached bath and dressing room for his only begotten son with all the facilities so that in future he and his wife could comfortably live therein. But he had admonished him that the room was strictly a private one and he should not allow anyone to enter his room. He had asked him not to bring in his classmates or friends. Visitors and friends were to be entertained in the spacious sitting room or in the guest room on the ground floor. He has warned him not to turn his room into a love-nest. Son kept the word and followed the directive till he completed his Pre University Course.
One day he brought in his intimate friend Vinod and took him to his room. Another day a gang of his classmates invaded his room. Then girl friends of the classmates followed. They then began to partying for hours during the night.
Madhu protested and objected.
“Daddy, what’s the wrong in taking my friends into my room? They let me into their room. We need space for us. We are no more kids. We know what we do. We are not in your time.” He shouted at him. The wife supported the son.
“Man, your ideas are out dated. Your thinking is out of time and place. He’s a grown up boy. They need their private space.” She had said.
He kept his mouth shut and pondered. His was a love marriage. His was late marriage, son a latecomer. He was now on the middle of sixties. The age difference between father and son was over forty. How long his journey would be? Another ten years? Would he ever see his grandchildren? He had no such dream or hope. It was his son’s life and up to him to mould it. He has brought him up in absolute freedom with responsibility. He has been trained in the art of being responsive and responsible. He has become major. Why should he so much bother about his son? Why should he worry about his conduct? He should be prudent. He should be diligent. No more room for internal fight and bickering at home. He knew he was now a spent-up force, an old dog.
He looked at the screen. Three fourth of the novel has been over.
The Suvarna’s elder sister Sujatha has completed her graduation. Marriage proposals flooded the Tharavad. Many a boy came to see Sujatha. All of them preferred the younger to the elder. The younger was seventeen and just passed S.S.L.C. Sujatha got the wind. She resigned and withdrew from the Pennukaanal custom and paved way for her sister Suvarna. Sujatha told the family that she was only happy about pursuing higher studies. Eventually Suvarna’s date was fixed. Thence she was looked upon as a woman, no more a teenage girl. More restrictions were imposed on her. She noticed attitudinal change in the elders towards her.
‘The first night will be the most beautiful and the most blissful. The first wedding night would be remembered by the couple for the life.’
The elders of the house and her friends of the locality conspired to her on the eve of the marriage. Her aunties and uncles sometime jokingly hinted at the agony and ecstasy of the wedding night. They did not give her any clues. Her mother revealed nothing. Her father was hardly seen around. Her grandma Savitri whispered to her ears while she was giving her a ceremonial bath on the eve of marriage:
“Ente Kuttee, listen carefully, the boy will hold you, touch your breast, stomach and below your abdomen. He may explore in between your legs where you urinate. Don’t be ashamed of anything. Don’t be afraid of him. Don’t get panic. Allow him to do whatever he wanted. He will put his thing inside you. For the first few times you will have acute pain and bleeding. Do not mind. Gradually you will feel sukham. In the end there will be Maha sukham. Your grand father made me like coconut chammanthy. He enjoyed eating me till I lost senses.”
Grandma’s rustic dialogue confused her. It really perplexed her. It was like a pistol shot warning. What was the gist of the ‘first night’? What was lovemaking? What were the intricacies and the interplays of the nightly game? Nobody had ever explained to her what would happen after all the colorful ceremonies and rituals got over.
Suvarna recalled her first night. She got bruises over her lips, boobs and vagina. She suffered his weight. She endured pain, inflammation and irritation in between her legs. She disliked salty taste of sweat and semen on her mouth and face. She had felt vomiting. The blood smeared over the bed sheet. A kind of sticky and messy liquid was dripping from her inside. She was sandwiched and minced till the clarion call. The naked body of the boy was on her. He was in deep slumber. For fear of kith and kin she never opened her mouth. She cried in silence and sobbed. Sukham was nowhere else.
The Suvarna did not know a thing about virginity, hymen and semen, intercourse, orgasm, conception and contraceptives. Kaamasashtram was not taught in the schools. Kaamasuthram was not conveyed from mouth to mouth. The elders never explained the art of Kaamakeli.
The author Indu Nair has narrated the experiences and the expectations of the heroine in simple and plain words. Perhaps, he thought, Suvarna must be the author herself! He immediately dismissed the thought as such kind of thinking might be prejudicial and wrong as well.
MAXI AND RASI came upstairs after the lunch. Max retired to his room. Rasi religiously followed him.
Madhu wanted to finish the first reading.
Suvarna delivered two daughters within two years of her marriage.
Since the husband was an employee of Central Government he got transferred all over India. She and children followed him from Palaghat to Madras, then to Calcutta and then to Bombay and then to New Delhi and finally to Bangalore.
Suvarna recollected that her husband has not been very helpful to her during the early formation period of their children, from infancy to puberty. The family’s vagabond life added to her misery. Husband believed in and held that the affair of conceiving, delivering, rearing, nursing, nurturing was the work and duty of the wife. He was only the provider for the needs of the stomach and of what was below the stomach.
Suvarna learned more from personal experience than from the text books. Her children grew up. The elder one Sanju was docile and temperate. The younger one Shaalu was rebellious and assertive. Suvarna discovered sooner than later that Shaalu was missing classes. She was loosing grades. She was often disappearing for hours into her room. She became late-going to the college and late-coming home. One day Suvarna got her shock of life. The truth came out of Shalu’s mouth. She was having an affair with a senior boy and they were spending time together in city parks and theaters.
Suvarna questioned. Shaalu answered adequately. Her answers seemed rational and logical. But her reasoning and logic clashed with her father’s temper and temperament. He exploded at the children. He beat them. He put them under house arrest. Their route map was fixed, from house to the college and back to the house. No roaming, no outing and no cinema without parents. He would not listen to their pleading. He would not compromise with the changes that were taking place in the permissive society in and around the city of Bangalore.
SUVARNA SEEMED CAUGHT UP in between the devil and the sea. She wanted to convey her daughters all about the female anatomy, girl-growing, love, lust, sex, virginity, dating, marriage, intercourse, mating, hymen, semen, conception, birth control, contraceptives, abortion, delivery, motherhood etc and etc before they got hold of such information from foul mouths and yellow literature. She was liberal with the children. She was lenient towards them. On the other hand her husband an orthodox Brahmin was conservative and authoritarian. He imposed new restriction on them. She was very much afraid that the children would explode and the traditional and familial bonds between them would be broken irreparably. She did not know how to go about it? Where to start and how to start?
Madhu was curious to know how the heroine solved her enigma, how she got over her worries and anxieties.
Suvarna already a matured woman tempered and tested by the time spoke to her husband slowly but steadily without hurting his ego. For the children she used the stick and the carrot as well. She finally spoke to them like a friend. She apologized to them for her husband’s sake. The children responded positively. They, like a team, discussed the issues burning within their heart. Like a devoted and responsible mother he admonished Shaalu to cut off her affair with the boy before he could cut into her belly. She suggested her to concentrate on the studies for the time being and wait for some more years for the marriage with her lover. She also advised the younger one to challenge the boyfriend for his fidelity towards her. She conceded to her daughter’s friendship with the boy.
Suvanrna pleaded, “Look, children, you are grown up and still growing. You have a long way to go before you get settled as per your aspirations and ambitions. Remember. We are not in Palaghat any more. We won’t be going back to our Tharavad. You won’t be getting married to Nambudhiris or to your murachekkans. But we are not in New York or London. I give you freedom which I never had in my life. Be responsible and responsive.”
Sanju soon realized the gravity of the situation and toed herself behind her mother. After heated arguments of several days Shaalu also took her mother’s advice.
It was a happy denouement!
Madhu sighed.
The door was opened. Max and Rasi emerged from the room fresh and fragrant with powder, perfumes and deodorant.
“Daddy, I will have to drop Rasi. It’s 5.30 pm. It’s getting late. I’ll come back within an hour.”
Madhu glanced at them.
Max appeared robust and virile. Rasi seemed happy and contended. He was twenty and she was eighteen, a graduate finale and a PUC finale, a Christian boy and a Punjabi girl.
Madhu observed Rasi’s T-shirt missed two buttons below her neck revealing her frontal cleavage and her lips swollen and colorless.
“Good night, uncle.” She said. He said nothing. They left hurriedly downstairs.
He did not respond. He could not respond. He would not respond.
Suddenly he felt he needed a walk and a stiff drink.
Notes:
Nair = One of the Hindu sub-castes
Tharavad = Ancestor’s home on maternal side
Nambudhiris = Brahmins
Thirandu Kalyanam = A celebration by a Hindu family of its daughter attaining puberty - the first menstruation. It indirectly tells the relations and neighbours that the daughter is marriageable.
Pennukaanal = Meeting the girl and her family by the boy and his family. If the boy or the family does like her, the marriage is on, otherwise off.
Ente Kuttee = My darling
Maha sukham = Great bliss. Maiden Orgasm
Kaamasashtram = Sexology, science of love and sex
Kaamasoothram = techniques of sexual play and lovemaking
Kaamakeli = sexual games
Murachekkan = cousins who have right to marry their nieces
Coconut chammanthi = pickle made out of gyrated coconut, green chilly, salt and ginger
Joseph Kaval is a freelance writer since 1960. He writes both in English and Malayalam his mother-tongue. He writes essays, criticisms, book-reviews, short stories and novels. He has published so far 200 short stories and five novels. He conducts classes on creative writing for college students. He edits and publishes Katha Kshetre an international literary quarterly in English from Bengaluru since 1999. Contact: joseph.kaval@gmail.com or kathalok@vsnl.net. Visit: www.josephkaval.webs.com
