Inheritance Read Online Free PDF Page B

window-panes in Grandmother’s house; insects flew in at will through the bars, and we all slept under mosquito netting. My grandmother had a room but I slept there, as did Jani, for Grandmother preferred the bench in the parlor for sleeping. We had a spare room for guests or to hang the washing in when it rained or on the days my grandmother went madhi—that is, super holy and untouchable until she had gone to temple and come back—her sari was hung by poles on lines high above the ground. The ceilings were twelve feet, and often I sat in this room, gazing at the madhi saris.
    The parlor was airy, with plants and woodencouches and cane chairs. There were carpets on the floor, old and thin with a few bare spots, but comfortable to the feet. There was a gods’ room, filled with images and renderings of Krishna, Laxshmi, Pilayar, and other gods from the pantheon. Fresh flowers were collected daily for the shrine; every morning, my grandmother made fresh designs with rice flour for the prayers. I often sat with her during the prayers, my task being to ring the bell when the oil lamp was passed in front of the gods. My great-uncle practiced Yoga and performed his morning ablutions and rituals even earlier than Grandmother. He’d apply his caste markings with red paste and veebuthi, a sacred powder made from elephant dung. He was a devotee of both Iyer and Iyengar customs, a follower of both Shiva and Vishnu, at least until noon each day.
    There was a music room with a veena with a carved dragon’s head in red and yellow at the end of its long neck, and a violin that Aunt Shalani could play on her visits. I don’t know who played drums, but a mridangam stood in a corner. My grandmother said there used to be many musical evenings in the house when my mother was young. My mother’s room and a small room with a writing desk and dusty trunks and wardrobes completed the house.
    My grandmother told some stories about my mother to me. How when she was young, she could run like a pony, fast on her feet. How she liked to wear ribbonsin her hair and wanted green ones for every birthday. My mother was born March 11, and the astrologists said hers was to be a special life.
    Until I was fifteen, I had never thought of my family as sad. We were not wealthy, but my grandfather had been a structural engineer of some renown. My mother, of course, had stripped our family bare, and because of her ours was a family violated by scandal, indiscretion, and shame. It was like Phaedra wedded to the House of Athens; of course, even after her, the House endured. But while Phaedra had been cursed by the gods, my mother alone was responsible for her actions. So I thought. Our family shook like a tree after my mother’s various transgressions. Once Jani and I attended a bharatnatyam recital in the city; as we were being seated, several acquaintances murmured a hello. It was then that someone whispered something about “those poor girls” and I realized our situation must look bad on the outside. I wanted to shoot the whisperer immediately.
    My great-uncle, with his strange mannerisms and shaky past—a man whose nails were yellow with opium, whose head swam with drugs—did little to help us; he would get dreamy in the middle of the day. He liked to wear multicolored turbans. He thought Coleridge was the greatest poet ever and could recite “Kubla Khan” any time. My great-uncle was a thin, wraith-like man with a sweep of white hair that he sometimes pulled to a knot at his neck. I was twelve before I learned that he had beenmarried, that his wife had been struck by a car and died. I couldn’t imagine him married, any more than I could believe he had ever been a baby. I thought he had simply sprung from somewhere, fully grown and alone, born in a field of poppies with a pipe in his hand.
    He was always lounging, a pillow behind his back, his legs completely relaxed. Even standing, he looked graceful, like a tall girl. His clothes all flowed. They