Translated from Tamil by S. Thillaina. Cover art: Detail from Bangladeshi rickshaw art.
My elder sister (akka) repeated what she had said two days prior: “The marriage cannot be solemnized without conducting the gold-melting ceremony.” When irritated, her voice sounded like the clucking of an enraged hen. She looked at me sharply. My heart sank. I knew this would lead to several complications. I had spent the first twenty years of my life as a slave to my three elder brothers. Failure in life is very familiar to me; my only aim was to ensure that the next failure would be smaller than the previous ones. So it was important to have at least akka on my side, as all three of my brothers were against my marriage.
The reasons for this were many. In 1960 Ceylon, brides were selected by the family, with the consent of the adults. I had broken that tradition, and my brothers were angry. On top of that, the bride’s family was quite well known in Colombo for their pompous lifestyle, which only contributed to their ire.
Ours was a love story, and the girl’s parents had promptly agreed to our marriage. My brothers should have given their consent but were unwilling. Since I was very firm about my decision, they agreed to the marriage half-heartedly but were secretly plotting against it. My brothers were bent on disparaging the bride’s family publicly, and the gold-melting ceremony would give them a perfect opportunity.
My brothers concocted excuse after excuse and delayed the ceremony for as long as possible. At long last they decided on an auspicious day and appointed a goldsmith to do the ceremony. According to the tradition, the bride herself was not permitted to attend the ceremony, only her family. They were notified of the date and time and presented with a list of things they should bring. The nine traditional varieties of grains, a mud pot, soil, several varieties of fruits, sweet snacks, a shawl, and kozhukaddai dumpling made of rice flour were all on the list. The groom’s family assembled turmeric, sacred ash, sandal paste, bananas, plantain leaves, betel leaves, camphor, raw rice, sugar candy, and a silk sari for the bride.
On the day of the ceremony, the wind was unusually strong, more powerful than a dust storm but not quite as strong as a hurricane. Unmindful of it, my three brothers were busy attending to the chores of the ceremony, happily chatting and joking. Their peals of laughter lingered long after their mouths were closed. My heart beat against my ribs. They had brought me down to my knees several times in the past, and I detected a sinister quality to their laughter. I feared that a conspiracy was afoot, but I could not divine what kind of explosion would occur, and when.
Soon women, their saris fluttering in the wind, and men sporting gold-bordered shawls arrived from the bride’s side, and the goldsmith got ready for the puja. My only job was to wear the best of my bell-bottom pants, work up a crest on my hair with a comb and the ample application of Brylcreem, and sit silently in front of the mud pot brought by the goldsmith. The Pillaiyar, the god revered for removing obstacles, was made of a fresh cow dung ball with a sheaf of arugam grass sitting on top of it. After a coconut was broken in front of the Pillaiyar, the puja began.The goldsmith’s right hand waved the camphor fire around the Pillaiyar while his left hand rang the bell. He filled the mud pot brought by the bride’s family with soil and planted the nine types of grain after soaking them in milk one by one. This pot with the sprouted grains would be ceremoniously carried by the groom’s party in a procession on the day of the wedding.
The goldsmith’s mud pot, which had been filled with coconut-shell charcoal, was set in front of me. He placed a gold coin on the charcoal, lit a flame, and kept blowing on it with a metal pipe. The coin disappeared in minutes and emerged as a well-shaped ball, and everybody said it was a good sign. For some it would turn up flat, for some like an apology for a dosai, and on rare occasions, even as a triangle.This gold ball would be converted into a thali pendant, a symbol of marriage, and tied around the bride’s neck by the groom on the day of the wedding. All congratulated me on my good fortune. But I had done nothing besides sitting idly in front of the fire.
It happened just when I heaved a sigh of relief that all had gone well. “Where are the kozhukaddai dumplings?” asked my eldest brother. Everyone looked at the bride’s party. Someone removed the white cloth covering one of the large trays brought by the bride’s family. A sad, solitary dumpling sat in the center of the tray.It was the one prepared by the bride’s mother the day before, kept safely overnight in a fridge that ran on kerosene and brought to the groom’s house for celebration.
As soon as the shock was over, my third brother’s wife voiced her surprise. “What, only one kozhukaddai?” She must have been dreaming of dumplings over the past two days. There is a story about her: when she was five years old, her parents had offered dumplings equal to her weight as a dulabaram in fulfilment of a vow they had made to a temple deity. At such a young age, she devoured half those dumplings all by herself. Now everyone in the bride’s party said in one voice, “Only the word kozhukaddai was found on the list.”
In the regime of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the ruler of Ceylon at that time, that solitary dumpling was made of a special kind of flour.The bride’s mother had stood in line for an hour to purchase it and had stood in for another two hours to buy the sugar. And she even had to consult Anita Dickman’s cook book for the recipe. All these details I came to know later.
My eldest brother ordered, “All right, cut it.”My second brother’s wife placed the dumpling on a cutting board and held both sides firmly. My eldest brother’s wife cut it into two exact halves. One half for the groom’s family and the other for the bride’s.
My eldest brother blared, “Where is the gold coin?” His voice was like the bark of a dog under threat. Tradition says that a gold coin must be placed inside the dumpling before it is steamed. After it is cut in two, whoever gets the half with the gold coin is considered the victor. They had not placed any gold coin in it. The bride’s brother was a popular lawyer in Colombo. He said in a court voice, “It was not on the list.”“Doesn’t everyone know this? Would anyone bring an empty dumpling to an important ritual such as this? Is it not the usual practice to bring a dumpling with a coin worth a sovereign?” These words were from my eldest brother’s wife. Her disappointment over the absence of a gold coin and the presence of hunger were mixed in her voice. To ease their stress, both parties proceeded to consume the dumpling and the snacks.
“Where is the sapling? It must be planted before the good time ends.” This was from my second brother. He felt that even the task of ruining someone’s life should be shared equally. The eldest brother should not appropriate it all.
“What sapling? Nothing of that sort was on the list.” “Should the sapling also be included on the list? Has any gold-melting ceremony ever been performed anywhere in the world without planting a sapling? Is not planting a sapling a sacred practice carried through the generations?” said my second brother’s wife. Though married to my second brother, she was a year younger than me. While thinking deep, her face would become as sharp as a needle. Somehow, she had learned all these rules by heart.
The bride’s party had come in six cars. An engineer uncle in their party had a car with doors that open backward. Without uttering a word, he opened the car door with a bang, drove off somewhere, and returned in no time with a beautiful sapling.Whether he bought it or stole it was a mystery. Murungai saplings grow easily and fast. The belief is that the couple’s family will thrive as well as the tree flourishes.
“All right, all right. The sapling must be planted before the auspicious time is over.Bring the bride’s maternal uncle. It must be planted by him right away,” said my eldest brother. This was the moment I had been dreading. My whole body began to tremble. My brother was adept at exploding a bomb right at the crucial moment. All stood shell-shocked. Who handed down the dictum that only the bride’s maternal uncle should plant the sapling? Was it an ancient Tamil poet from Eelam, or was in the constitution of Ceylon?
Our longtime family friend, Chinnappu, who had been watching everything silently until then, opened his mouth. His unassailable principle was that rituals ought to be performed as ordained by tradition. He was the custodian of all rituals in our town, and nobody dared oppose him. Since he could compose curse poems, they feared he would resort to one on the spot, to the discomfiture of all. A story had been circulating that once he instantaneously sang a curse poem at a squirrel that nibbled at a mango in his garden, and the squirrel fell down dead. Chinnappu declared, “If a sapling is to be planted, it must be done only by the bride’s maternal uncle. Weren’t these ritual codes written for use ages ago? Can we violate them? If the bride has no maternal uncle, are we responsible for it?” While saying this, he cast an angry look at me. There was none who could match Chinnappu in a duel of words. I sent both my sisters a pitiful look.
They had got up at four o’clock that morning, doing their makeup elaborately and achieving perfection. Akka combed her sister’s hair, and she did the same for akka. They had chosen the best bangles and worn them in the most alluring order and had applied kajal to make their eyes blacker. Necklaces inlaid with green and red gems adorned their necks. I looked at them alternately. Before and after doing their makeup, my akka had promised to stand by me. I expected her to say something, but she signaled to me with her kajaled eyes, “Be patient, be patient.” She was of absolutely no use. She did not have a vote in such matters.
And my little sister, poor girl! She had gotten married only six months earlier. When the prospective bridegroom made a formal visit to our house to decide on the marriage proposal, she was captivated by his looks and decided to marry him that instant. When I asked her why, she said, “I liked the style in which he peeled the banana from the bottom and ate it.” I quipped, “Only monkeys eat like that.” Not a word had passed between us after that. I could never expect her to speak on my behalf.
My bride had no maternal uncle, a fact that had been dinned into everyone’s ears umpteen times. Finding an uncle is not as easy as finding a sapling. The bride had an uncle thrice-removed in relationship. He was bound for Jaffna by train to participate in the annual bullock cart race. A cousin close to the bride rushed to the railway station and brought him over. He had bought a ticket and was just about to board the train. The old man tottered into our house like a murderer entering the courthouse to await his sentence.
The moment I saw this man, the figure of a praying mantis flashed across my mind. I could count his ribs through his polyester shirt. His hands trembled. Whether this was due to a birth defect or to fear could not be ascertained. His long hair flowed down and stuck to his sweaty cheeks.It was a mystery how he dared to compete in a bullock cart race. The only question that ran through everybody’s mind was, “Is he capable of lifting the sapling and planting it?” He somehow managed to plant the sapling despite the heavy wind forcing it in the opposite direction. Both parties forgot to offer a snack or even a morsel of that single kozhukaddai or a cool drink to the old man who had missed his train for our sake. He might have to take a train to Jaffna the next day or the day after. He was the hero of that day. As humans generally do, in no time everyone forgot that great man who had saved my marriage from crisis.
Full of true love for me, my fiancée did not know anything about the squabbles that had taken place. She stood holding the gate to her house for a long time, eager to eat the leftover snacks her party would bring her.
Convinced there would be no more insults, the bride’s family took their leave. Until they got into their cars, they did not look at anything but the dry leaves swirling on the ground. They must never have experienced a day such as this.
There was a smile on the lips of all my three brothers. The same smile I saw at the beginning of the ceremony, but with a little twist. It was a triumphant, vengeful smile.
Appadurai Muttulingam was born in Sri Lanka and has published numerous books in Tamil, including novels, short story collections, interviews, and essays. Stories translated into English have been published in three collections. They have also appeared in anthologies Many Roads Through Paradise (Penguin Books 2014) and Uprooting the Pumpkin (Oxford University Press 2016). Among his honors are Sahitya Academi award 1998 (Sri Lanka) and SRM University literary award 2013 (India). His short story was published in the Narrative Magazine (Nov 2021) and another selected as finalist in Armory Square Prize (2023). He lives with his wife in Toronto.
Translated from Tamil by S. Thillainayagam, retired professor of English, M S University, Tirunelveli. He has published Feminist Literary Essays, a collection of his research papers presented in international literary conferences and a book containing precise and simple meaning in Tamil and English for the Thirukural couplets. Six of his Tamil-to English translations have been published, and he is now translating a collection of Tamil essays and a novel.
