Oddiyanam (7)

   The Independence year.

             Here was her sweet daughter Sugantha . Whatever was she doing. She has collected the cow dung from the cowshed and is making veratti. Tears roll down the mother’s eyes . Oh ! how I brought up my daughter . Never a harsh word. Never has she spoiled her hands with such work. Always ,except for a few years in between, we have had a live in ayah to tend the garden and to do all outside jobs. Oh my poor, poor daughter.

       ( I have seen my own mother make  those  dung cakes . So I don’t make much of this fuss. It was all in the days work in those days I feel.)

            Jayamma can only curse her sister in law  who was also her sambandhi in her mind for her cruelty. . This monthly ritual continues,  teary eyes and all, till Sugantha becomes pregnant a year and a half  later and comes home to deliver a baby boy and then returns again to Purasaivakkam.

              Do you know how they calculate the mandatory 3 months?  No not 90 to 92 days. Even if the baby is born on the last day of the Tamil month , then one month is deemed to have ended.So in fact the girl will be sent back even within 62 days. 

                 At the next monthly visit Jayamma cannot believe her eyes. Can 

her sister in law really be so cruel. Pachchai udambu kari as they say in Tamil is even splitting firewood. One may argue for arguments sake , look at the platform dwellers , they give birth on day one and work from the next. Most of them are however farm workers who have migrated to the city and are already capable of hard work.  We on the other hand  are puny beings. So this  story touches even my  heart.

                 Sugantha returns to her mother’s home . TB is diagnosed.  The 25 paun Oddiyanam is sold for her treatment. She however  wastes away and dies ,leaving a 10 month old infant motherless and Jayamma  inconsolable. 

                 Elder sister  Janamma comes rushing to Madras and takes her sister and grandchild with her to Pune . Here in Pune,   Jayamma bruised and shattered  looks at the difference in her life as in contrast to her sister’s. Sadly she remembers those days a life time  ago when she playfully thought she could equal her sister.  

                     India gets Independence. Jayamma in her grief cannot rejoice,  she returns home with a heavy heart. The infant stays with her. 

                  The first year ceremony is over  and then her step brother visits her. Will he take away this baby from me?