Love in the Time of Valentine’s

Sankaran was tall and sprightly, with quick wit and playfulness that made him attractive. With an easy smile and infectious laughter, he looked the romantic sorts. Observing his affection towards his sisters and his efforts to amuse the children of the house, his eldest sister would say that her younger brother may not know to succeed, but well knew how to love.

He was a loser among his family of five accomplished brothers. His father, a doctor, was revered in the town. The family was large and Sankaran found it easy to be lost in the crowd at home. His buddy was Vengutu, a classmate, who held his hands and flunked the SSLC exams and listened to Manna Dey’s soulful songs on the radio. Post results, they laughed it off with a halt for a movie at the tent that was a cinema hall in the late 1950s.

Doctor Appa had enough money to send his four sons to America and England to study.   Sankaran could never manage to cross the seas, but liked to croon like a broken- hearted sailor by the mitham for the many infants that hung on thoolis as he leafed through his Wildes and Maughams.

Sankaran managed to scrape through a B.Com from The Hindu College in neighbouring Madurai after losing a couple of years. He did not mind. Vengutu kept him company. They would idle the evenings away stopping by the NellaiAppar Koil. It was not the times when young unmarried men and women met at any gathering that was outside of the family. Sankaran and Vengutu would guiltily look away when they espied a pretty face, their ears quickened to the gentle chime of anklets, the rustle of silk saris and the scent of jasmine in the crowd that gathered at the temple. God, he was sure, would grant him a wife that men wished for in their dreams. In the meantime there was idleness, evening prayers at the temple, the cinema and a quiet smoke by the Tamarabarani. Life, he would pontificate to Vengutu, was found in the curve of irony. 

He was 23 when his elder sister showed him a sepia photo taken in a Madras G.K.Vale Photo Studio. She stood by a small flight of five wooden steps leading to nowhere and a vase of plastic flowers. In the background was a painted canvas of a mansion with arched doorways. ”Varan venuma?”, Akka enquired teasingly. The young woman of 18  was slender, tall, doe-eyed, her oval face ringed with errant wisps and a thick braid snaked over her left shoulder. Sankaran found her alluring.

“She is Rajalakshmi,  eldest daughter of  Subramani Iyer, the famous lawyer from Madras High Court”, Akka announced.  

“You can tell Appa”, Sankaran said, smitten.

“She’s posh.She was home schooled by an English nun”, Akka offered a bonus.

“I’ll read Keats to her”, Sankaran brightened.

“She is rich, spoilt and has a temper and you will have to work hard and keep her in comfort. Her father will find you a job in Madras and you will be given a house across the Adayar River”, Akka listed.

“Can I meet her?” Sankaran asked distractedly.

By this time the women had gathered and passed the photo amongst them.

“She’s too thin”, said Tiruchi sister.

“Lissom”, defined Sankaran.

“Dark”, said Vaikkom Chitti.

“Chocolate”, Sankaran corrected.

“Can I meet her?”

“No you can’t. They live in Madras and going back and forth is too much bother for the princess”, chorused the women. 

After a fortnight of  aching doubts and agonising dreams, Sankaran had his answer. The wedding was fixed for the second week in the month of Tai. A job awaited him as junior accountant with Swamy and Iyer Lawyers firm in Madras and he would begin his married life in Madras with “Chocolate” Raji. He rushed to meet Vengutu to share the information. Sankaran gave him the news and after the initial excited bits, showed him Raji’s photo.

“Changara, not her,” Vengutu said. “Her horoscope and photo have been doing the rounds for the past two years and despite the family’s standing, she has been rejected by many”. Feeling unspeakably insulted Sankaran said, ” Vengutu drop it”, and left the house in anger.

A week later, when he returned from a walk by the river in the evening, Tiruchi sister took him aside to the kitchen. “Appa wants to know what you have to say to this”, she said thrusting a yellowed paper into his hands. It was a page torn from a notebook with tiny newsprint letters cut higgedly-piggedly from The Hindu.  An anonymous letter. It said, “She is hiding something from you. Don’t marry her”.

Sankaran boiled. It must be Vengutu, the blackguard. He decided never to meet him again. He crumpled the letter and tossed it in the kitchen terracota oven and said, “Akka, she is the one”. He vowed to himself to love her tenderly unto death and to cherish her until the sun went down. The world and its jealous lot may well be damned.

The wedding was a splendid affair, worthy of envy. Subramani Iyer was the new rich- the elite of Independent India- and a wedding in Madras was all it was expected to be, with fine food, excellent concerts, expensive silks and jewels, and Sankaran was fussed and feted with pomp and ceremony by Raji’s parents and her sisters. Sankaran was at his best-witty, funny, joking and cheering- keeping both families in good humour, a rare occurance amidst the tiresome rituals of a Tamil wedding. Chocolate Raji stood comely by his side, smiling prettily, laughing, but horribly shy of answering or talking to anyone, but nodding in acquiescence. Sankaran’s sisters approved. “City-bred, yet demure”, they agreed.

At long last, on an appointed and auspicious hour, Sankaran found himself alone with his sweet bride at his nuptials. She wore a maroon silk sari with a gold border that set her dusky complexion glowing. He sat beside her on the bedecked four-poster bed.

“Are you happy?” he asked her, and without waiting for a response said, “I am, and that’s because of you”. 

“You have made me the happiest man in the world”, Sankaran gushed. Raji looked up at him and he paused to drink from her eyes.

“You are most kind-hearted”, she spoke up, her eyes shimmering.

He lost no time in gathering her in his arms in an act of crumpling silks, tinkling jewels and raspy breaths. He kissed her eyes that fluttered shut; nudged his jaw against her soft cheeks and nuzzled her perfect ears, sparkling with large diamonds, and in a modern display of affection, drew back and said, ”I love you”. 

“Oh, you are thirsty”, she replied and leaned to the bedside table for a tumbler of water.

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Prashant went to a store with red danglers  and brought a candy-pink card embossed with a large crimson heart. He’d decided today was the right day. He was 16 and man enough to give the card to Priya in the evening. He went home and found his grandparents Sankaran Thatha and Raji Paati watching Sun TV. They looked grey and doddering, with Paati stone-deaf, and bald Thatha forever fussing around her, like a pup after a bone.

“What’s that?” Thatha asked, stretching a hand.

“Valentine’s card”, Prashant said defiantly, flipping it open to the printed line, ‘To the One I Love’.

Raji Paati waved the card at Prashant to ask, “Is this for those who can’t speak or hear?”