As Sweet as Honey

3




Rain fell intermittently each day, swelling to a steady downpour in the afternoons. I’d watch the water pour off the gutters set on the roof from the veranda, lying down on the heavy swing, sometimes resting my head in Aunt Meterling’s lap. She smelled sweet, like sandal powder and jasmine. Sometimes she’d braid my hair in a five-strand braid, weaving in the flowers the kanakambaram vendor brought to the house even in the rain. I hoped my aunt was braiding away her sorrow, for I wanted to help her carry some of her pain.


Our house in Madhupur was a rambling affair built in the days when Pi was an island still under colonial rule. High-ceilinged, with an impressive swing inside the front room as well as the one outside, with windows barred, and mounted fans circling on days when the current was good, it had a kitchen in the back that held a large clay amphora for drinking water, and a storeroom that was mostly kept locked. I spent much of my time up on the roof with my cousins. There, where the mango trees weighed down with fruit made for easy treats, after the monkeys were chased off, where in the morning, crows waited, talking away until fed with offered rice, we were in paradise. We could see long drumstick beans hanging off the trees, and coconut palms with big green fruit. We had an iron spike in the yard to break open the coconuts, and a tiny steel teeth-edged wheel sunk into a slab of wood to shred the flesh. Out in the back, we had a two-and-a-half-foot mortar and pestle to grind batter out of rice or lentils. Our cook would squat and rotate the pestle with strong arms, using her hand to scoop any straying batter back into the mortar. I always feared she would crush her hand, but she never did. The doors we left open in the day, so you could run straight in and straight out, which was convenient if we were stealing snacks. At night, the heavy doors were shut, and the vertical latches were secured.

Named for the setting of The Tempest, the initials PI stood for Prospero’s Island as well as p, that strange symbol for the eternal fraction, a moniker that appealed to the island’s mathematicians, sages who could not stop the Dutch or Portuguese, the English and French as they invaded and conquered Pi, but could only scratch their heads with resigned sadness, even as the assaults became bloodier and more severe. As schoolchildren, we all knew the story of the Home Rule movement, which freed but also parted India and Pakistan—squandering Gandhi’s hard-won struggle for independence with blood—and made Sri Lanka separate as well. Our island got its independence too. Pi was the tiniest crescent-shaped bindi above the eyebrows to Sri Lanka’s tear, a small spit of an island floating in the Bay of Bengal, resembling Madras when Madras was Madras and not Chennai, but resembling Chennai as time went on. Looking deeper, though, it seemed a bit Greek, a bit Italian, a bit African, a portion of every world culture that claimed sea and surf.

Where we lived, Madhupur, was on the western coast, the largest city on the island. Back in 632 C.E., it was just a town built around a Pallava temple. That was when Pi was known as Manjalmallekaipoongam. As the Rajarajeshwara temple was being built in Thanjavur, gopurams on our island became larger, intricate with stone sculpture. Other small towns dotted Pi, speckled with cave temples and some Buddhist stupas. The temple at Srirangam in India was begun a hundred and three years before Vasco da Gama came to the subcontinent. By the time Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, the East India Company was a decade old. It was more than a hundred years later that a storm-tossed ship landed on Pi, with a Dutch captain who named what he thought was an uninhabited island for Prospero, a magician who could calm sea storms. Had he been taken with As You Like It, he might have selected Het Eiland van Arden; if Romeo and Juliet, New Verona. White men had arrived earlier than the Dutch, but the tribal Banacs refused to be captured, and killed these unfortunate entrepreneurs who sought circus stock for their English queen. Even today, the Banacs still lived in the hill country, but now their men sported American T-shirts made in China over their dhotis. Every year, poverty and disease reduced their number, and every year, the government turned away its eyes. That was what governments did in general, I was told, although I wasn’t quite sure what a government was. I imagined elderly men and women playing Parcheesi, only their cowrie shells represented countries and towns.


In the north was the town of Trippi, more remote and therefore more enticing, the hot spot for tourists looking for nirvana and bhang and gurus. Vacationing Indians mixed with Europeans, and the police were lenient and easily bribed. Street musicians and magicians performed all night and day, and the bazaar had anything you could want. It even had its own ice cream, Trippi tutti-frutti. Surfers, though, stayed away from Trippi, happier with seaside hideaways, where waves were seemingly endless. This is where they came after contests in Hawaii and Australia, where they could relax with coconut juice, and count on the waves, beer and bonfires at night, and dawns full of promise. Villagers nearby kept a strong hand on their young women, marrying them off quickly to protect them from the charms of the bare-chested foreigners who laughed loudly and seemed to want to become friends. It wasn’t only the villagers who were careful of their daughters; town and city dwellers were the same. Sex before marriage loomed large as a menace, and parents were anxious to prevent unwanted couplings between islanders and foreigners, as well as between islanders themselves. Marriage provided stability, safety, as well as status.

The seasons followed India’s patterns: rainy season followed by monsoon in the winter; nearly unbearable fire heat in April and May; then a mild summer. The sea kept our moist air excessively humid in April and May, and the vegetation was lush. Flowers were in constant successive bloom. Lotus stayed constant, but different species of rose, firecracker, and bougainvillea bloomed in pattern. Mango season followed gooseberry season, then jackfruit and sapote. Sometimes it seemed as if everywhere one looked, there were flowers and birds and lizards. Drought was rare, but flood was not. Still, mostly it was temperate, even, and predictable, nearly always warm.


As far back as I could remember, evenings after dinner, just before we were summoned back from the alley where it was safe to play as the summer sun set, Aunt Meterling would teach us ten new words of English. Next morning, we’d have to recite the words to her, and write them on our slates. She used a worn paper primer with unattractive crosshatch drawings. Apple. Bird. Cat. We breezed through the first five. But then, inexplicably, came “Fig.” Ph-ih-ghhh. It made no sense—not the sounds, not the spelling, not even the illustration. It looked like no fruit we knew.

“What color is it, anyway?” I asked.

“Brown,” replied my aunt.

Of course. Brown, a dull color. Later I’d learn that figs could be black, or purple, or green, that they could be split open to reveal a jeweled sunburst, that a microscopic wasp was the reason it existed at all. Later, I’d love the taste, but then it was merely the ugliest fruit I had seen, with a nearly unpronounceable name. I’d start and come up with a “pa” sound, a “ba,” but the “ph” sound was elusive, slippery. In Tamil, there was no such sound, although we had a near-impossible “rjzha” I can’t begin to spell in English even now. That sound was found in the Tamil word for banana—a fruit, frankly, that was easy to love. And the banana, we were taught in school, was simply the queen of all trees. Its fibers could be used for rope, its leaves for baskets and hats, and the color was a lovely yellow. Who doesn’t love a banana? Or a mango? No, the fig was an oddity, some dessert dish that made my lessons miserable.

“Nonsense!” chided Meterling when I disclosed my doubts about this fig. “Figs,” she said, “are delicious, and in our ancient lore, quite sacred. Why, Gautama Buddha himself received enlightenment only under a fig tree!”

I remained unconvinced. There and then, I resolved that this English was not a language for me.

Mary Angel did not understand my frustration and laughed. In her house, they spoke English frequently. Mary Angel also gave me more information about this fig and its leaf.

“It’s what Adam and Eve covered up with,” she said.

“Covered what up with?”

“Their dishonesty. They lied to God and he tossed them out of the garden. You can see pictures in our Bible.”

Later, Sanjay would tell me what exactly they covered.

I myself would have used a banana leaf.

• • •

Soon I became as fluent in English as Mary Angel. We all did, and oddly, started to like the language, even if the spelling was strange. The problem was the “gh” that could be said either “ph” or “gh.” The ghost had enough of coughing. Uncle Thakur loved to quote George Bernard Shaw on language. From him we learned to play with English, just like the way he and Uncle Darshan pretended to translate Shakespeare into Tamil: Friends, cut off your ears and give them to me. I have come to bury the scissors, not ask for the price of scissors.


My grandmother’s kitchen was built of plaster and stone, and watermarks covered its surface in many places. One day, the wind howled as if announcing a change. Although the walls were eight inches thick, it felt as if the wind had moved inside, clanging the pots eerily. My aunt Meterling and I stared at the iron skillet, thrumming now with an almost imperceptible vibration. My aunt turned her attention to the kettle, flipping her hair with a flick of her wrist. It was such a careless act, a carefree movement that belied everything up to that point. This was a woman in mourning, on an island where some women shaved their heads in grief. My aunt’s hair shimmered like a lake.

“The air is warm in here,” she said.

I shivered. I could still hear the wind.

“I think the kettle is burning too slowly,” she said. I looked at her. What did she mean? That the water was taking too long to boil? I looked up at the ceiling, wondering if Grandmother was nearby.

Meterling ran her hands through her hair again, but more slowly this time. Then she picked up a tea bag from the box of India Golden Tips and placed it in the Jane cup. The cup had a facsimile of Jane Austen’s head on it, looking oddly dour in fading gold paint. It came from a set of Famous Authors, but Keats was long gone, and Johnson had a chip.

“I should probably pour the hot water right into my mouth,” she said.

I stared at her.

“I mean, we have such a conviction that tea will cure all ills, that all we ever really need is a good cup of tea,” she explained.

I let out a breath. She was making a joke. I sat down on a stool. Still, nothing was certain. She could be on the verge of crack-up. That’s what I was watching out for.

“Why are you staring at me?” she now asked.

“Are you feeling all right, Auntie?” I asked.

My aunt looked away. I was again conscious of the wind. I thought—but just then, Uncle Darshan came in.

“Look, that whale in London had a bad time of it and died,” he said, shaking the paper. He had not noticed my aunt, and spoke directly to me. We had been following the news on the radio, about the minke whale caught in the Thames, while hundreds watched from the shore. Even the prime minister had come down for a look. Last night, a rescue boat was trying to guide it back toward the sea.

The sound of china shattering to the floor made me turn.

The teacup had slipped from my aunt’s fingers.

“He should not have died,” she whispered, bursting into tears. I too thought the whale shouldn’t have died, but my aunt was taking it badly. The teakettle began to whistle urgently, and Uncle Darshan switched it off.


Grief was something my grandmother understood. She understood that one entire year was needed to mend the heart, to mourn and wail, to sit staring at space with no intention. One year to tie up the stomach in knots at night, and untie it every morning. She knew that grief had many names, that it came unbidden at the slightest provocation.

“Leave Meterling alone,” she told us. “Soon she’ll be back the same.”

Maybe. But we missed her magic tricks, we missed her laughter. We even missed going to the market with her, where she never carried a list, forgot whatever really was needed for the kitchen, and could easily be persuaded to buy pistachio ices. Our tongues green, we’d run back singing at the tops of our voices until stopped short by one of the other aunts.



Love had found Meterling when she least expected it. There were no letters carefully preserved and perfumed and tied with string. There were no photographs—not even from the wedding. The photographer was near tears himself; none of the photos came out—“almost, madam,” he told my grandmother, “as if the gods themselves decreed there would be no witness.”

Archer and Meterling had known each other such a short while. No time for her to save movie stubs, a stolen menu; no time to press flowers into heavy dictionaries. Yet Archer must have had all the accoutrements of a suitor at some point. Surely, he must have proffered her a bloom on a walk, tucked a sprig of jasmine in her hair, and compared her to any number of objects: the sun, the moon, the stars. Was she his happy orange (“happy giraffe,” said wicked Rasi), his celebrated plum? His melon full of fragrance and yielding just a tiny bit? His enchantress, his toffee, his reason for existence? My mind spins at the possibility, for Meterling won’t tell.

I imagine their courtship as furtive and romantic, like Romeo and Juliet’s. Meeting in secret, at night, stealing kisses in the dark, behind trees and bushes as they did in the films. I have no real information to base this on; I was not privy to any of it. I create my narrative with overheard conversation, stories recalled and told, a bit of imagination, using what I know now, and my eyes then as a ten-year-old.

But I was on the cusp of eleven, and after my birthday, Rasi told me, my world would change. She sneaked Nalani’s Mills & Boon books, and read about scores of handsome, brooding men, and heroines who never thought their looks amounted to much, until they wore that one dress and loosened their hair. The books, Rasi told me, all ended the same way: the hero would crush his lips on the heroine, murmuring something like “You little fool, I love you.” I was only half interested; getting my lips crushed did not sound inviting. But soon, I began to read them too, secretly. Still, I couldn’t help thinking Rasi would punch any boy who called her a little fool, and I would, too.

I realized I wasn’t a heroine. I actually liked the way I looked, and practiced smiling in the mirror. I did want a cowlick when I was seven, even though it was something little boys had in the books. My favorite character from the Famous Five was George, short for Georgina, and I think she might have had a cowlick. But I had read all the Enid Blyton I could find and so I looked at Rasi’s books. No, I was not a heroine. I did not think my hair was mousy, thinking that meant messy instead of a kind of color. I did not wear quiet colors—but then, I did not live in Australia or England. The men did not sound that interesting, with their cruel mouths. Who would want to hang out with a cruel mouth? Around me, it seemed, the boys had soft mouths; soft, round faces. If you said boo, they’d run away. Archer hadn’t a cruel mouth. He was always smiling, it seemed, always telling jokes and making Meterling laugh. I couldn’t imagine him crushing Aunt Meterling’s lips.