It’s always nice to be here at Write...Edit....Publish, for
the last time this year, wow! That 2013 went quickly! I am posting a flash and since I have written
several posts on seasonal festivals in India, and some of them have
been for RFW, time for sharing something that isn't seasonal. Hope you enjoy this
glimpse of a living tradition that goes back unbroken for thousands of
years.
I will be travelling shortly, and possibly
offline, so will catch up with you all as and when I am able to hook up. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
2014!
Seeing Red. And White.
Kushal woke uneasy, as though a
dream had laid a huge weight across him that awakening wasn’t meant to shake
off. The ceiling was unfamiliar too, and
flustered him before he remembered he had come away from home, and Maddie. Maddie.
Madhavi. They had bickered, a
perfectly pointless disagreement. It
seemed incredible as he lay in the mussed but clinically impersonal hotel bed. When
had he started caring about such nonsense? what she wore, the way she dealt
with the baggage of a gen-next immigrant, whether she wore her marital status
on her sleeve.
But there was no time to brood, the
workshop was to start soon, and there were the Mughal miniatures, the museum to
check out. He was in the city of his forefathers,
much to explore, maybe some explanations, some connects to take away. The phone rang as if on cue, Kushal jumped. Maddie!
“Hey, wake up! When does it start?”
It was only Pete, a fellow artist.
“Nine. You ready?”
“In fifteen minutes.”
“Okay, see you at breakfast.”
He cut himself shaving, bled a drop
onto the spotless washbasin. Red on
white. Red and white. Just like the bangles. He still couldn’t believe the stupidity of
the whole thing.
***
The sound was annoying, the jingle-jangle
of metal, combined with a hard to place clacking, neither stone nor wood. He looked across again to where Maddie was
sitting for him, reading. She had an arresting
face - a childhood accident, and reconstructive surgery that had not been able
to wipe out all the traces; her flawless skin faintly patchy, puckered in a
band across her left temple and cheek, her lips lifted by a hairsbreadth in a
lopsided secretive smile – they made her face at once irresistible and
intriguing. The rest of her was draped
on a slouchy armchair, her back against one armrest, her legs thrown over the
other, her skirt swished sideways and trailing, almost touching the floor. The
sun slanted in through the large bay windows and highlighted the planes of her
face, deepening the hollows of her collarbones and waist.
“Take those bangles off, will you?”
he sounded impatient, brusquer than necessary. “I can hardly see your arm.”
“What?”
“The bangles. Take them off. Can’t do the sitting with them.”
She put down her book obligingly and
took off a mass of silver bangles, laid them in a heap on the floor. All except the last two, a white, carved
conch-shell one paired on each wrist with another deep red; the source, he
realised, of the clacking noise as she moved her hands to pick up her book
again.
“Take those off too, please.”
“No.
Can’t.” She didn’t lift her eyes from the book. “These stay put for the
time being.”
“Wha-a-t?” He let bafflement slide
into a sneer. “You believe that crap about ‘harm to husband’ if they come off?”
She glared a warning at him, “Kush! Paint
me with them. Or leave them out as you
wish.”
“How does a girl who refuses her husband’s
surname, wear red-white bangles signifying holy matrimony? What happened to unfettered freedoms? How come this sudden love for tradition, aren’t
the bangles a tad hypocritical under the circs?”
Hypocritical. One word leads to another; that word led to a
few more. The tone suddenly turned vicious midway, the talk bitter. His resentment surfaced perhaps, his neediness
- as red and bone-white as the bangles on her wrist.
“This is how it is. Red-white
bangles. Maiden name. Muddled up traditions.”
She had snapped the book shut and whiplashed straight up from the
chair. “I thought you knew me better.”
And she had walked out. Walked back to
that husband no doubt, whose last name she shunned, but for whom she still wore
the mandatory bangles for a long marriage, good health and fortune. Were all women this strange or was it just
Maddie? Kushal had tried her cell several
times, she ignored the calls. The next
morning he left.
***
The traffic was terrible, but the
roads much wider than the childhood impressions formed as his mother had reminisced
about the alleyways of Daryagunj. He
wished he had paid more attention, remembered the address of the old house she
had described. There was no way to
retrieve it now, she had died some years back. But he mentally made vague plans
to visit the neighbourhood one evening; asked the driver, “Daryagunj?”
embellished with a hand gesture that universally meant ‘where’. The response too came in a similar gesture that
could only mean ‘not nearby’.
There was little time to feel hard
done by or reminisce at the workshop, it absorbed all his attention. Afterwards, they went to the Mughal miniatures
gallery. He had of course studied the
ones in the British Museum; but a different experience to view them in their
natural home. The group had been
allocated an enthusiastic docent - one Purnima Sen - who knew the paintings inside
out. Kushal couldn’t help but notice
that she wore thin red-and-white paired bangles on her wrists. The same clacking noise as she waved her
hands around explaining the exhibits. Also
the natural home for them bangles, he wryly thought.
“Let’s go through to the Harappan
galleries,” Purnima said once they’d finished.
“Really, the grandmother of all our sub-cultures. You can’t leave without taking a peek –”
He browsed the exhibits lining the
walls, the ancient pottery, the bronze figurines. A child’s terracotta toy behind glass – a crude
figure atop a wagon, but the wheels smooth, the axle perfectly balanced -
clearly for pulling along. Strangely touching. His mind flashed back to a wooden engine he
had got Maddie’s child.
As he walked to the opposite wall, a
burial site from millennia ago came into view in the centre, a skeleton on its
side lay with bits and pieces around. He
drew closer, fascinated. The label
alongside identified it as a female, a married woman who had predeceased her
husband. The evidence, he read and his
heart lurched, lay in the shell bangles still encircling the dead bones of both
her forearms.
WC – 1015
All feedback welcome.
Red and white (shakha-pola) bangles - image courtesy Anindita Khamaru.
Incidentally, the colours red and white have a very special significance in Hindu culture, red is the colour of "Shakti" the divine feminine force, it denotes prosperity and fertility, white is associated with purity and spirituality. The red and white colour pair occur as a motif throughout Bengali/Hindu culture - a bride is dressed in red, while her groom's attire is white; women wear white sari's with red borders for religious occasions; married women wear these special red and white bangles; Hindu monks wear red and white markings on their foreheads and many other instances.
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