Bridges

By Sivasankari

I wrote Bridges for two important reasons. Long years before I came to be known as a writer, I heard fascinating accounts of their life and times from my elders. Rukmini Paati, who was part of our domestic staff, said, ‘Those days, married couples only got to speak to each other on auspicious or festive days. Yet these rare interactions were enough to cause pregnancies, much as cotton catches fire in the vicinity of a flame. To what lengths the young women went to attempt abortions! Sesame soaked in jaggery was a favoured concoction. Eating camphor stuffed in coconut and left in it for four days led to burnt mouths and insides, even death.’

Peria Athai, my elder aunt said, ‘We boiled castor oil and poured it into pots and arranged them in a row in bamboo racks, and this oil served both as fuel for our lamps and a laxative periodically administered to all the children.’

You had to stay out of sight of one and all during your periods. During those days, we sat in the cowshed and made brooms and mud stoves by hand, patted and dried cowdung into cakes for fuel,’ my mother recalled. Other elders gave graphic accounts of the puberty rites, four-day-long weddings, and the ‘santi muhurtam’ or marriage consummation ceremony of their time.

The lifestyles, practices and rituals of my grandparents and other ancestors of pre-electricity, pre-modern vintage overwhelmed me, amazed me, made me think.

This was the first impetus for the writing of Bridges.

As for the other...

The mellowing of a wilful, temperamental girl into a sober young woman on her coming of age and having to shoulder responsibilities was another fact of life that left me wonderstruck. I found it even more surprising that this once callow young woman whom responsibility made into a wise and effective link between the generations, eventually grew into a complaining old woman, age and debility perhaps robbing her of the wisdom she acquired over the decades. I am sure there are exceptions to the rule, but I speak of the majority.

I do believe that an old woman spends the major part of her last years in looking back and ruminating over her past, just as a young girl dreams of her future for most of her waking hours.

It came as a revelation to me that a woman is moulded at a certain stage of her life to act as the present that links the past and the future, a bridge that spans two shores vastly separated by thought and circumstance.

The birth and death of this process of maturing of the mind that takes place in a woman was my second inspiration for creating Bridges. When the Tamil original, Paalangal was first published in 1983, I dedicated it to all those who helped me build those bridges: Rukmini Paati, Peria Athai, Amma, Yagappanagar Paati, Brinda, Pappamma, Saroja, Kamalam Mami, Swaminatha Mama, Radha, Parimala, Lalita and many other Thathas, Paatis, Mamas and Mamis, whom I did not know before I met them to research for the book. I remember them once again with happiness and gratitude.

I rededicate the book also to Mr Balasubramaniam of Ananda Vikatan who unhesitatingly encouraged me and serialised this unusual tale that was in the nature of a concatenation of events and incidents rather than a typical novel. To him and the three artists he commissioned, Gopulu, Maruti and Jeyaraj, whose period-specific illustrations embellished each generation featured in the novel, my sincere, joyous gratitude.

- Sivasankari

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pustaka Digital Media
• Release date: Aug 12, 2019
• ISBN: 6580501803723

Book preview

http://www.pustaka.co.in

Bridges

Author:

Sivasankari

For more books

http://www.pustaka.co.in/home/author/sivasankari-novels

Digital/Electronic Copyright © by Pustaka Digital Media Pvt. Ltd.

All other copyright © by Author.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Table of Contents

1. 1907–1931

2.1907–1931

3. 1940–1964

4.1940–1964

5.1965–1985

6.1965–1985

7.1907–1931

8.1940–1964

9.1965–1985

10.1907–1931

11.1907–1931

12.1940–1964

13.1940–1964

14.1965–1985

15.1965–1985

16.1907–1931

17.1940–1964

18.1965–1985

19.1907–1931

20.1907–1931

21.1940–1964

22.1940–1964

23.1965-1985

24.1965-1985

25.1907–1931

26.1940–1964

27.1965–1985

28.1907-1931

29.1940–1964

30.1965–1985

31.1907–1931

32.1940–1964

33.1965-1985

About the author

Sivasankari has written with great awareness on social issues and social problems. Globally recognised and honoured for her writings, she is the recipient of several awards. These include the Kasturi Srinivasan Award; the Raja Annamalai Chettiar Award; the Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad Award and the Tamil Annai Award. Her books have been translated into many Indian languages, English, Japanese and Ukrainian. Some of her major works are Oru Manithanin Kathai, Avan, Nandu, Verillatha Marangal, Amma Chonna Kathaikal. The Library of Congress in the USA has seventy-two titles by her.

Knit India Through Literature is her mega-project involving intense sourcing, research and translation of literature from 18 Indian languages, with a mission to introduce Indians to other Indians through culture and literature.

About the translator

The late S Krishnan was a prominent figure in literary and journalistic circles in Chennai. He worked with the USIS for over thirty years and contributed greatly to its growth. Krishnan’s witty and thought provoking column Between You and Me in The Hindu was a runaway success. A great admirer of RK Narayan, he edited a collection of his works titled Malgudi Days for Penguin India. Possibly his best known literary effort was his translation of Sundara Ramaswamy’s Tamil novel, Oru Puliamarathin Kathai.

A man of varied interests, Krishnan was an ardent music lover, knowledgeable in both Indian and Western classical traditions.

Author’s Note

I wrote Bridges for two important reasons. Long years before I came to be known as a writer, I heard fascinating accounts of their life and times from my elders. Rukmini Paati, who was part of our domestic staff, said, ‘Those days, married couples only got to speak to each other on auspicious or festive days. Yet these rare interactions were enough to cause pregnancies, much as cotton catches fire in the vicinity of a flame. To what lengths the young women went to attempt abortions! Sesame soaked in jaggery was a favoured concoction. Eating camphor stuffed in coconut and left in it for four days led to burnt mouths and insides, even death.’

Peria Athai, my elder aunt said, ‘We boiled castor oil and poured it into pots and arranged them in a row in bamboo racks, and this oil served both as fuel for our lamps and a laxative periodically administered to all the children.’

You had to stay out of sight of one and all during your periods. During those days, we sat in the cowshed and made brooms and mud stoves by hand, patted and dried cowdung into cakes for fuel,’ my mother recalled. Other elders gave graphic accounts of the puberty rites, four-day-long weddings, and the ‘santi muhurtam’ or marriage consummation ceremony of their time.

The lifestyles, practices and rituals of my grandparents and other ancestors of pre-electricity, pre-modern vintage overwhelmed me, amazed me, made me think.

This was the first impetus for the writing of Bridges.

As for the other...

The mellowing of a wilful, temperamental girl into a sober young woman on her coming of age and having to shoulder responsibilities was another fact of life that left me wonderstruck. I found it even more surprising that this once callow young woman whom responsibility made into a wise and effective link between the generations, eventually grew into a complaining old woman, age and debility perhaps robbing her of the wisdom she acquired over the decades. I am sure there are exceptions to the rule, but I speak of the majority.

I do believe that an old woman spends the major part of her last years in looking back and ruminating over her past, just as a young girl dreams of her future for most of her waking hours.

It came as a revelation to me that a woman is moulded at a certain stage of her life to act as the present that links the past and the future, a bridge that spans two shores vastly separated by thought and circumstance.

The birth and death of this process of maturing of the mind that takes place in a woman was my second inspiration for creating Bridges.

When the Tamil original, Paalangal was first published in 1983, I dedicated it to all those who helped me build those bridges: Rukmini Paati, Peria Athai, Amma, Yagappanagar Paati, Brinda, Pappamma, Saroja, Kamalam Mami, Swaminatha Mama, Radha, Parimala, Lalita and many other Thathas, Paatis, Mamas and Mamis, whom I did not know before I met them to research for the book. I remember them once again with happiness and gratitude.

I rededicate the book also to Mr Balasubramaniam of Ananda Vikatan who unhesitatingly encouraged me and serialised this unusual tale that was in the nature of a concatenation of events and incidents rather than a typical novel. To him and the three artists he commissioned, Gopulu, Maruti and Jeyaraj, whose period-specific illustrations embellished each generation featured in the novel, my sincere, joyous gratitude.

Sivasankari

1. 1907–1931

Pattamma sat up. She rubbed her hands, held them in front of her face, and opened her eyes slowly; looked at the lines on her palms in the dim light; pulled out her thali from under her sari, held it to her eyes, and murmured a short prayer.

She patted back her tousled hair and tied it up in a knot; stood up, looked around, and straightened her sari, which was in disarray.

The cow mooed from the backyard. Somewhere a cock crowed. Stepping carefully to avoid treading on the others still sleeping on the floor, she opened the backdoor and came out of the house. Stars twinkled in the predawn light. Flowers on the plants along the fence, about to bloom, glimmered faintly. The air held the fragrance of the jasmine on the bough.

She picked up the vessels to be cleaned and left them at the well; took out a piece of coconut husk from a pile, stripped it into thin strands, and collected a handful of the ash that lay heaped near the mound of straw. Going back to the well, she let a large vessel down with a rope and drew water. Sitting on her haunches, she cleaned the vessels thoroughly with the coconut strands, ash and water, set them aside, went back to the house to collect some homemade toothpowder from a niche in the wall, brushed her teeth and gargled. She then washed her face and dried herself with the end of her sari.

She returned to the house, put a kunkumam dot on her forehead, trimmed the oil lamp in the puja room, lit it, prostrated before the goddess, praying that it should be a good day

Again she went to the backyard, mixed a handful of cowdung in water, walked through the house and opened the front door. She made a gesture, inviting Sridevi, the goddess of fortune, into the house, and sprinkled some water. For good measure, she went back to the backyard and sprinkled some water there too, asking Mudevi, the goddess of misfortune, to go away. She then returned to the front of the house, poured the cowdung water on the front yard, swept it thoroughly; and drew a kolam on the ground with rice flour, though not as elaborately as usual since it was getting late.

Her father-in-law would be up soon, and her sisters-in-law were not available to help with the housework today. Her younger sister-in-law Sarada would be over her period only two days from now. And the youngest, Komu, had gone to her parents’ home to have her first baby. It was not easy to manage the house single-handedly even for three days.

She hurried into the kitchen, removed the ash of the fire in the clay oven extinguished last night, went out and added it to the heap of ash near the straw. She then cleaned the oven, smeared it with watered cowdung, and drew a simple kolam on it with rice flour. Now it would be ready for use at night.

She then fed coconut husk and dried cowdung shards into the other oven, which had been cleaned and prepared last night, struck a match and lit it. It blazed immediately. Thank goodness! Her mother-in-law Meenamba would have been outraged if Pattamma had used more than one match to light the oven. Among the household virtues a woman should possess, thrift loomed high on Meenamba’s list. ‘What is the use of the husband slaving away in rain and shine if his wife uses up all his income on boxes of matches?’ was the way she would have put it.

And she would say: ‘In our days we never even used a match. We would light a small stick of broom in the flame of the night-lamp, and use it to light the fire. As soon as it caught, we would wedge it into a slow-burning dried cowdung cake that would smoulder all day long. When we wanted to light the oven again, we simply blew on the cowdung cake until it started to blaze, and put it among the husk, which would catch fire immediately. That is how a smart woman does her household work.’

A lively and active woman, Meenamba died suddenly after two days of fever, four years ago. Since then Pattamma had the entire running of the house in her charge. She boiled some water, poured it into another vessel, and added two handfuls of coffee powder to it. She let it set for half a minute, and then strained the coffee through a thin piece of cloth kept especially for the purpose. The coffee powder was nearly used up, would last for only one more day. Her father-in-law had just brought a good quantity of seeds from Thanjavur. She would roast and powder some that afternoon, and keep the rest to be done with the help of Sarada when she could come into the house again after the ritual purification.

The milkman had already milked the cow. Pattamma poured the milk into a vessel, set it on the fire to boil, and went to the front room to wake up her brood. She shook awake her eldest daughter Sivakamu, who was lost to the world. ‘Here, wake up, Sivakamu. Do you know what time it is? Girls should not sleep so late, it is not nice.’

Sivakamu yawned. Sat up. Wailed: ‘Amma, you wake me up every day before dawn. I am so sleepy.’

‘That is as it may be, but get up.’

‘But Kondu is still sleeping?’

‘Kondu is a boy, he needs more sleep. Stop answering back and make yourself useful. Sarada Chitti is not at home to help. Go brush your teeth, sweep and clean the cowshed. Hurry up. Thatha will be up any minute.’

Sivakamu rolled up her mat, put it away, and went to the backyard. She cleaned her teeth and washed herself. She let the cow Lakshmi out from the shed, and tied it to a coconut tree; swept the shed, removed the dung and cleaned the floor with two large pailfuls of water. By the time she finished the chores her mother had given her, it was broad daylight.

Kalahasti Thatha had returned from the canal after his ablutions, had his coffee, and gone to the front porch. Ganapati, Pattamma’s husband, and the uncles were gathered beside the well to clean their teeth and wash. Pattamma rattled off comments and orders at Sivakamu, who had now come in.

‘Don’t stand there like a statue. Wake up the kids—the elders are all up already—and clean out the hall. Wipe the floor twice, not just once as they do during funeral ceremonies. It is very inauspicious. Do your work carefully and seriously. When you have mopped and wiped, sweep the floor again as long as you are about it. Do you know that Bhoomadevi, the goddess of earth, won’t put her child on a floor that has not been swept and wiped? Do you follow me? Get going.’

Sivakamu went to the hall, and woke up her male cousins, Kondu and Nana, and her younger sisters, Parvati and Lakshmi. Just as she was finishing wiping and sweeping the hall, Pattamma was at her again. ‘What do you think you are doing? Performing a dance with the broomstick? You must learn to bend low and sweep, and you must take your time over it. As they say, a prancing bullock will never carry a load. If you are so lackadaisical about housework, people will blame not you but me for bringing you up so badly.’

‘I am sorry, Amma, but the broom has worn out.’

‘Come, come, it is a poor workman who blames his tools. Stop tattling. Finish your work and bring all the children in. I have to give you your breakfast and dress the girls’ hair before I can go to the Kaveri.’

The children ranged themselves in the passage and sat on the floor. Pattamma mixed cold rice with thick curds and some salt, and served it along with vegetable curry made the previous night, putting heaps of the mixture into the leaf-cups the children held in their hands.

Pattamma then did the girls hair. She rubbed fresh gingelly oil into their scalp, combed the hair smoothly, and plaited it.

Sivakamu gathered the remnants of the cold rice in a vessel, added a slice of lime pickle, went to the backyard, and called out to her chitti Sarada who was sitting out of sight behind the cowshed so that her menstrual pollution might not affect anybody through contact or propinquity.

Sivakamu said: ‘I’ve brought some cold rice and lime pickle. Would you like a mango? I can pluck one from the tree.’

‘No need, dear. Some would have fallen down, and I will pick up one myself, when I sweep the backyard. Go now, if Thatha sees you lingering here, he will not like it.’

Sivakamu set out some straw for the cow, went in, picked up her vessel, and joined her mother in the daily trek to the Kaveri for a bath, and to bring drinking water for the house. They crossed the street, passed the Ayyanar temple, went through the bamboo grove, and there was the Kaveri, flowing merrily along. Sivakamu hoisted up her skirt, tied it below her shoulders, and swam for a while. When she came back to her mother, chilled and giggly, she was promptly given advice again by Pattamma. ‘Mix some manjal with the mud and rub it hard on your arms and legs, so you won’t grow hair like a man, and your skin will glow.’

Sivakamu did as she was told. Both mother and daughter dunked their heads several times under water, muttering a prayer all the while. They climbed out of the water and walked home with their vessels full.

Pattamma started the cooking. Sivakamu picked flowers from the backyard for her grandfather’s daily puja, and prepared the chandanam. She sat for a while with Kondu and Nana on the front porch where Thatha taught them their lessons. She also tried writing on the sand spread out to serve as a slate.

Lunch was finished; Pattamma cleaned up the kitchen, and sat down to roast coffee seeds. Seeing she did not have a sufficient quantity of cowdung balls, she called out to Sivakamu, who was playing a game with cowrie shells with her sisters, to ask Sarada to prepare some cowdung balls. Mildly irritated at being disturbed in her game, Sivakamu nevertheless went to the backyard where her aunt was making cowdung patties. Sivakamu shouted out to her: ‘Amma says that there are not enough cowdung balls. She wants you as long as you are making the patties, to also make a basket of the cowdung balls.’ Sarada said she had already made some, which Sivakamu reported to her mother.

At this moment someone called out. Pattamma said: ‘It sounds like farmer Munian. See what he wants.’

Sivakamu went out and soon came back with a couple of thazhampoo flowers. She explained: ‘Munian had to go to Tillaisthanam on business. There he saw the thazhampoo and picked up a couple for us.’

Thazhampoo is a very fragrant flower, unusually long. When it is split and woven in a criss-cross fashion into a girl’s plait, the result is quite beautiful.

With an irritation that was clearly pretended, Pattamma said: ‘As if I don’t have enough to do. Anyway clean the flowers and split them in the proper way. I will do the plaiting for you later on.’ By the time the girls had the flower stitched on to their hair and had the arrangement topped with other flowers from the garden, it was two-thirty.

Pattamma lit the fire again, prepared coffee, which she shared with the menfolk, and then made dosai. After the elders had eaten, she gave the children rice with curds and pieces of dosai. She also prepared the meal for the night. It was now four o’clock. She washed her face, combed her hair, and put a kunkumam dot on her forehead. It was beginning to grow dark. She lit the lamp in the room for puja, and also lit the lamps in the four corners of the house as well as several standing oil lamps, using castor oil and heavy wicks made from the cotton in the garden.

Around seven, she put out the corner lamps dropping a little milk on them. She went to the passage and asked the men in for their dinner. She laid banana leaves for them, sprinkled water to clean

Reviews for Bridges

[Aparna Sriram · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A clear depiction of family, rituals followed and the change over the years. Loved reading the book.