to be a monkey who freaked out when Anand flashed a light on its face and attacked him. Anand fell from the tree and hit his head on a stone, its sharp edge just missing his left eye.
Sowmya and I, sick with worry, ended up screaming for help like the girls we were.
We were all reprimanded the next morning and unfortunately that had been the last time we had gone to the orchard on vacation. Kathalu-Thatha , did not make it through the coming winter and Thatha, his only next of kin, sold the family house and leased the orchard to some jam and juice company.
After we folded the two muslin clothes with the mangoes, Anand looked around stealthily and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “If Nanna found out . . . he will kill me.”
Here was a grown man, about to become a father, who was still afraid of his father.
I shook my head. “Just don’t smoke around Neelima.”
“Of course,” Anand said, and sat down on the cement floor. He leaned against the cement balustrade and sighed. “I have been waiting all day for this.”
“Neelima is not the happiest person in the world,” I told him bluntly. “You keep bringing her here and they’re all so mean to her.”
“They are just getting to know her. . . . You know how they are when someone new comes in. Remember how both my Amma and your Amma made Lata’s life miserable when she and Jayant Anna got married?” Anand said.
“Lata is very different from Neelima,” I reminded him. “Neelima feels really bad, Anand.”
“She would tell me if she felt bad,” Anand said, looking up at the sky. “See the Saptarishi?” he asked, pointing at the constellation of seven stars shaped like a question mark. “For the longest time I couldn’t see Arundhati,” he said.
The Saptarishi were the seven Maharishis, great holy men, who were created by the vision of Lord Brahma. They were learned beings to whom the Vedas had been revealed and they represented the seven powers of life and consciousness in all of God’s creation. The seven rishis were married to very nice-looking women and once when they were performing a yajna, Agni, the God of Fire, saw the women and immediately fell in lust with them. Agni’s then-girlfriend, Svaha, wanted to please her lover and took the form of all the rishis’ wives in bed. She could, however, take the form of only six of the wives. Arundhati was such a true wife that Svaha, no matter how hard she tried, couldn’t change her body to look like Arundhati. Thanks to all this shape-shifting and sex, Svaha got pregnant, and the rumor that traveled around the Godly circles was that one of the six Maharishis’ wives had a baby with Agni. All the rishis, except for Vashishtha, who was married to his true wife, Arundhati, kicked their wives out for being not-so-true wives.
In the Saptarishi constellation of stars, the last but one star at the bottom, which is Vashishtha, has a small star revolving around it, and that is Arundhati. The myth is that if you cannot see Arundhati, you will have bad luck . . . lots of it.
“And now you can see her?” I asked, avoiding looking up to find out if I could see Arundhati. It was a silly superstition, but I didn’t want to put it to test.
“Not really,” Anand said, “but I am getting there. Neelima will adjust, Priya.” He took a deep puff and blew out small rings.
I put a finger through one dissolving ring of smoke. “You should tell Ammamma and Lata and the rest of them to stop blaming her for marrying you.”
“It is not something you should have to tell your own family,” Anand said bitterly. “And I can’t just walk up and tell them . . . can I?”
“Of course you can,” I said. “Be a man, Anand, stand up for your wife. Or is Thatha still controlling you like a puppeteer?”
I was being a little harsh. . . . Well, I was being very harsh, but Anand’s nonchalance at what his wife was going through at the hands of his family had increased the temperature of my blood. And Anand and I were close enough that I knew I had a right to be direct with him. As I guessed, Anand didn’t take offense but he was a little miffed.
He crushed his cigarette on the cement floor and glared at