As Sweet as Honey Read online

  I was glad Uncle Archer’s parents were spared his death. Grandmother herself had seen the death of three of her children as adults: Meterling’s father, Nalani’s mother, and Sanjay’s mother. Even one was one too many, and there are people in the city who say my grandfather died of grief. I knew that the death of a child is the very worst thing that can happen to a parent. My grandmother’s face was lined, soft, stoic as well. She could be cross with exasperation, and her voice could turn querulous. Maybe she knew more than we did that life wasn’t to be wasted over petty things. But how does one separate petty from what is important if what is petty seems important at the time? Whenever we fought, it was always over something of importance. When we were punished for fighting—our toys being taken away, or having to write out the times table—we sometimes forgot what the fight was about.

  I never saw my grandmother cry. I wondered if she cried in bed, like I did. We used to take turns sleeping with Grandmother, or we’d all tumble into bed with her. Her body was so comforting, a big mound gently breathing. She smelled good, too, not like powder or perfume, like some of the overseas aunties, but of chapati dough, wet silk saris hung out to dry, sometimes vetiver. The fan circled above, and the night’s shine came in through the windows. Sanjay, Rasi, and I believed that if we slept with Grandmother, mosquitoes would not bite us at night. Look, we’d say, showing off our smooth arms and legs in the morning, no bites.

  “Was Uncle Archer really a white man, Auntie?” asked Rasi one afternoon.

  But Aunt Meterling didn’t answer, just got that distant look in her eyes, and we threw Rasi murderous looks. What a thing to ask! She had been at the wedding like all of us. A few myopic older great-aunts had whispered “Kashmiri” as they gazed at Archer’s pale face and sandy gray hair. Some thought he was Anglo-Indian, which was what Rasi was asking, but we knew better. His father, Oscar, was English, as was his mother; both had a fondness for Robin Hood. We knew too that Archer’s father was a gin maker, although we didn’t know what gin was exactly. The place he made gin was on the island somewhere. There was a card game called gin, and one called rummy, though we ourselves played “Declare” with ten cards, one sequence, no jokers. But Archer’s father’s gin was liquor, and not for children, and no, we don’t have any in the house, go run out and play. Archer had worked for his father in Distribution, not Disturbance like some neighbor suggested, and why were we listening to all this talk anyway?—but when his father died, yes, I am still telling you the story, Archer decided to live on Pi instead of England, and live off the interest of his inheritance. That’s why his bungalow, which we saw only once, was as sparsely furnished as an islander’s, though most of the British and European homes on the island were thick with furniture and lamps and paintings, even pianos. It would have been nice, though, if he had had a piano.

  • • •

  Archer had invited his family to the wedding, but only his sister and a cousin attended.

  Mother? Uncles? Nieces?

  He had little family, most already dead. Some friends from Eton showed up.

  He went to Eton?

  Someplace like that, anyway.

  Some friends from Eton, then, showed up, with girlfriends and wives, and kept a watch on proceedings. The family retainer attended. One of the women wore a sari, insisted on hennaed feet and hands, and spoke a good deal about a Madame Blavatsky and vegetarianism. Some of the foreign men gave Uncle Archer hearty claps on his back. An Italian couple watched the proceedings with interest while we were watching them. The woman was wearing a white silk dress, which was looked at askance by those who believed that white was for funerals. A boy with curly hair stood shyly by them, until one of the other boys befriended him. It was always like that at weddings—we kids always found our level and ignored the rest. The Italian boy grinned at me at some point, and I smiled back.

  Our families will be tied together, grandmother had said to one of his friends. Archer is top-notch, said someone. Then, She’s very tall, isn’t she, the bride? Grandmother sighed. Yes, we are very happy to have him here, she said, in English. It didn’t sound right. She tried again:

  We are very happy he is coming to the family.

  Afterwards, his friends fled back to England, after awkwardly offering condolences to everyone but the bride. The Italian family looked stricken; they went on earlier than they’d planned for a holiday in Ooty. Uncle Archer’s family lawyer flew home, after speaking to our uncles. Archer had died of an aneurysm was the guess, not by poisoning, not by murder. No need for an inquest. There was a moment when the sister demanded one, convinced Archer had been murdered for his money.

  My grandmother drew up to her full five-foot height and asked if the sister really believed her granddaughter was benefitting by marrying Archer. It was a painful situation, but the cousin intervened. No one knew how to approach Meterling—she was so consumed with grief.

  My aunt did not go to the funeral. Uncle Archer’s family, represented by the sister and the cousin, were to take the body away, to “bury on decent soil,” the sister had said. It seemed like an awful lot of bother, to transport a body from one country to another. Grandmother bristled, but what could anyone do? Antigone, someone said, but we didn’t know what that meant, and someone else said, well, it was her right, the sister’s; she had refused a cremation.

  “It’s not right that she is not invited to the funeral,” said the cousin to the sister.

  “She’s not really part of the family, Simon,” said the sister, furious with our aunt.

  “She’s his wife,” he said softly.

  “What could he have thought, marrying without even introducing us? Who is she? What is she?”

  “Susan …”

  “He’s my brother, Simon.”

  No one could get a word out of Aunt Meterling then, racked with sobs as she was.

  “What of the money?” asked Aunt Pa. “What of the rights of a widow?”

  But Meterling just continued to weep. If anything were to come to her, that funny-looking cousin wouldn’t be telling us any time soon.

  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.