secured into place with safety pins. Babo was trussed up in a bodacious rust suit with a rose in his buttonhole, Nehru-style. He’d had the mane mushrooming around his head tamed by the hotel barber, and then they’d set off. Babo and Siân: ready to rattle the cage of the world.
The rest of the Patel family were in a train moving towards Anjar, too. Meenal and Dolly, who had been playing wedding-wedding for weeks on the red-brick terrace with the neighbourhood girls – each fighting to be the beautiful foreign bride – twitching and chirruping in their new chanya cholis. Chotu – sole boy, coerced into playing his brother at these make-believe weddings – dressed for the first time in long pants instead of half-pants, spinning a cricket ball in his hands. Trishala, seriously practising what her husband had taught her to say, ‘Hellooo. Nice to meet you. So nice to meet you.’ And the children, giggling themselves silly, hearing the stiff English words from their mother’s mouth.
Here they were: Babo, clean-shaven, triumphant; Siân, glorious and soft like buttered honey. Shoulder to shoulder, clear and bright. Meenal, Dolly and Chotu, watching from the dark pupils of their eyes, wondering if their lives were going to have as much masala as their brother’s. Trishala reconciled: ‘Pretty, quite pretty,’ she conceded to her husband, who was busy outdoing himself, because hadn’t Babo warned them? Hadn’t he written to say: If she doesn’t feel right, if it’s all too much, if she feels the slightest bit of discomfort, you’ll have to let us both go . And didn’t they want to hold on to their son now that he was standing here in his grandmother’s house, open like a kingdom, showering the village of Ganga Bazaar with his requited love?
Where was Lilaj-bhai? Shouldn’t he have been taking pictures? So that later, their children could marvel at their parents: how young and beautiful and strong and proud . Later, wouldn’t they want to see where they came from? Which nose, which stubborn chin, which forehead, which finger, which wisp of curly hair, which touch of eye and skin and blood had mixed and mingled to make them?
Because they were standing now: Babo, Siân, Prem Kumar, Trishala, Meenal, Dolly, Chotu, Ba. And here were the missing spaces: Nerys, Bryn, Huw, Owen. This is how it was on that chilly brand-new 1 January morning in Ganga Bazaar, Anjar, in 1970, with the family gathered around. A wedding of miniscule size but momentous proportions.
Here was Ba watching from the bamboo grove, thinking finally, finally . Because these two looked to her like a dream from another life. She took them aside and told them three things: look to the sky every day – for the sun and the moon signify eternal devotion of husband and wife; look to the sea – for love flows deep and you must be prepared to flow deeper; journey like the fish and the birds – because it is only those who agree to their own return who can participate in the divinity of the world. She poured honey in their palms and made them drink from one another so they could give sweetness to each other all their lives. Then she revealed a lore for fulfilling desire in seven nights.
To Prem Kumar and Trishala she gently reminded that he (or she) who disturbs a marriage is reborn as a mosquito.
So this was a beginning here. An opening of a window. A letting go.
For Siân there was much learning to be done, much forgetting.
‘Don’t forget where you’ve come from,’ Bryn had said, ‘Don’t forget about us.’
But there were so many new things to learn. How to wear a sari properly; how to cook and care for your clothes, jewels, skin; how to choose the best vegetables in the market; how to make sanitary napkins; how to serve the men first; how to store water and save electricity. How to how to how to.
On their first night together as husband and wife, on cotton mattresses in Ba’s back room, Siân couldn’t get certain things out of her
The rest of the Patel family were in a train moving towards Anjar, too. Meenal and Dolly, who had been playing wedding-wedding for weeks on the red-brick terrace with the neighbourhood girls – each fighting to be the beautiful foreign bride – twitching and chirruping in their new chanya cholis. Chotu – sole boy, coerced into playing his brother at these make-believe weddings – dressed for the first time in long pants instead of half-pants, spinning a cricket ball in his hands. Trishala, seriously practising what her husband had taught her to say, ‘Hellooo. Nice to meet you. So nice to meet you.’ And the children, giggling themselves silly, hearing the stiff English words from their mother’s mouth.
Here they were: Babo, clean-shaven, triumphant; Siân, glorious and soft like buttered honey. Shoulder to shoulder, clear and bright. Meenal, Dolly and Chotu, watching from the dark pupils of their eyes, wondering if their lives were going to have as much masala as their brother’s. Trishala reconciled: ‘Pretty, quite pretty,’ she conceded to her husband, who was busy outdoing himself, because hadn’t Babo warned them? Hadn’t he written to say: If she doesn’t feel right, if it’s all too much, if she feels the slightest bit of discomfort, you’ll have to let us both go . And didn’t they want to hold on to their son now that he was standing here in his grandmother’s house, open like a kingdom, showering the village of Ganga Bazaar with his requited love?
Where was Lilaj-bhai? Shouldn’t he have been taking pictures? So that later, their children could marvel at their parents: how young and beautiful and strong and proud . Later, wouldn’t they want to see where they came from? Which nose, which stubborn chin, which forehead, which finger, which wisp of curly hair, which touch of eye and skin and blood had mixed and mingled to make them?
Because they were standing now: Babo, Siân, Prem Kumar, Trishala, Meenal, Dolly, Chotu, Ba. And here were the missing spaces: Nerys, Bryn, Huw, Owen. This is how it was on that chilly brand-new 1 January morning in Ganga Bazaar, Anjar, in 1970, with the family gathered around. A wedding of miniscule size but momentous proportions.
Here was Ba watching from the bamboo grove, thinking finally, finally . Because these two looked to her like a dream from another life. She took them aside and told them three things: look to the sky every day – for the sun and the moon signify eternal devotion of husband and wife; look to the sea – for love flows deep and you must be prepared to flow deeper; journey like the fish and the birds – because it is only those who agree to their own return who can participate in the divinity of the world. She poured honey in their palms and made them drink from one another so they could give sweetness to each other all their lives. Then she revealed a lore for fulfilling desire in seven nights.
To Prem Kumar and Trishala she gently reminded that he (or she) who disturbs a marriage is reborn as a mosquito.
So this was a beginning here. An opening of a window. A letting go.
For Siân there was much learning to be done, much forgetting.
‘Don’t forget where you’ve come from,’ Bryn had said, ‘Don’t forget about us.’
But there were so many new things to learn. How to wear a sari properly; how to cook and care for your clothes, jewels, skin; how to choose the best vegetables in the market; how to make sanitary napkins; how to serve the men first; how to store water and save electricity. How to how to how to.
On their first night together as husband and wife, on cotton mattresses in Ba’s back room, Siân couldn’t get certain things out of her
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