The Enchantress of Florence (A review)*

* Published in The Hindu (Literary Review) 4th May 2008


If you are the sort of reader who begins at the end, you will first bump into the six page long bibliography appended to The Enchantress of Florence. Despite this, however, Rushdie’s latest novel remains a rich re- imagining of history with scarcely a trace of the scholarly heaviness that one has come to expect of fiction that grapples with historical and political themes. The enchantment, thankfully, is alive and kicking – at least for the most part, and the narrative retains a seductive lightness. But while readers escape the fate of having to plod their way through historical detail, there is another path, the path of mirrors and reflected story lines in Mughal India and Renaissance Florence, that they have to traverse. This then is the trade off, essentially.
While The Enchantress of Florence is a story about many things and a story about story-telling itself, it is anchored if somewhat insecurely around the visit of a yellow-haired European, Nicola Vespucci or Mogor dell’Amore, to the court of Akbar. Claiming that he is the son of Akbar’s grand-aunt, the European restores public memory of Qara Koz or the hidden princess who was cast out of Mughal history for choosing her conqueror over her family. The hidden princess becomes the ultimate traveler in this cross-cultural tale, a traveler who shifts allegiance with disloyal ease. When Akbar falls in love with her memory, moving his imagined queen Jodha out of the way, it is a love that smacks of incest and blasphemy.
Snooping around the gaps of history, Rushdie delves into the minds of historical characters such as Akbar to string together a multi-themed narrative about time, travel, identity, power, desire and story-telling. The over-arching metaphor that binds these themes together is the mirror: the hidden princess has a slave girl who is her mirror, the Florentine Argalia is, to an extent, the mirror of Mogor dell’Amore, Jodha Akbar has a mirror in the hidden princess, the artists Mughal artist Dashwanth who paints Qara Koz and the Florentine artist Filipepi who paints the other enchantress in the novel – Simonetta are mirrors of one another, and so on. On a larger scale, the Mughal empire and Renaissance Florence mirror each other as well. As Mogor dell’Amore tells Akbar, “This may be the curse of the human race…Not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike.” As the stories twist and turn in front of mirrors, reality becomes a mirage. The lake at Sikri is a mirror too, reflecting the shifting fortunes of the city.
With his usual irreverence, Rushdie transforms Akbar into a fictional character, exploring his psyche at leisurely length. There are insightful if somewhat tongue-in-cheek comments on Akbar’s attempt to switch to the democratic “I” from the royal “we” and the difficult issue of handling power, the ethical burden of being king. On the other hand, Qara Koz’s access to power is of a very different sort. She has to be enchantress in order to rule. The identity of women in the narrative is highly fluid and under constant threat.
In Rushdie’s universe, there are two kinds of people: those who travel and those who prefer not to. Jodha as the queen who never leaves the palace thinks of travel as something that removes you “from the place in which you had a meaning, and to which you gave meaning in return by dedicating your life to it.” In this, she is like Ago Vespucci, the Florentine, who believes that it isn’t “necessary to go questing across the world and die among guttural strangers to find your heart’s desire.” Yet, stories travel only because people travel - people like Mogor dell’Amore, Argalia and Qara Koz herself. Connected to travel is the notion of time. Mogor dell’Amore tells Akbar that in the new world, “the ordinary laws of space and time did not apply”, that time had been introduced to this world by the European voyagers. The point of the novel, however, is not that one culture is superior to the other but that both are equally fantastic, that both abound in stories and that travelers ensure that these stories, which are really mirrors of one another, travel back and forth.
There is a downside to reading The Enchantress of Florence which perhaps those who know Rushdie would in any case anticipate: it is overdone in parts and at times the story more than runs away with itself. There is also the curse of the long sentence: perfectly constructed and reasoned out no doubt, but still a bit over the top. Take, for instance, this one: “[Akbar learned] about the dignity of the lost, about losing, and how it cleansed the soul to accept defeat, and about letting go, avoiding the trap of holding on too tightly to what you wanted, and about abandonment in general, and in particular fatherlessness, the lessness of fathers, the lessness of the fatherless, and the best defences of those who are less against those who are more: inwardness, forethought, cunning, humility, and good peripheral vision.” The occasional lapse into hyphenated coinage is no less annoying: He must have been mad to bring you,’ Argalia told her when blood-filthy and kill-sick he found her abandoned at the death-heavy end of the day.” One can’t help feeling victimized at times by the mirror itself Its many reflections, made possible by a Rushdiean cleverness, get a bit tedious and reading the novel begins to feel like work. Fortunately, Rushdie’s humour compensates for much of this. We smile when Rushdie describes Queen Gulbadan:
“When Gulbadan started climbing the family tree like an agitated parrot there was no telling how many branches she would need to settle on briefly before she decided to rest.”
The Enchantress of Florence is a book that will work for readers who are okay with getting a bit lost. Like Dashwanth, the artist who disappears into his paintings of the hidden princess, Rushdie demands that we permit ourselves to be sucked into his magic world of mirrors.

Conversations with Paul Theroux*

*Interview with Paul Theroux by K.Srilata (The Hindu Sunday magazine - 24/2/2008)

Excerpt from The Old Patagonian Express (London: Penguin, 1979)
One of us on the sliding subway train was clearly not heading for work. You would have known it immediately by the size of his bag. And you can always tell a fugitive by his vagrant expression of smugness; he seems to have a secret in his mouth – he looks as if he is about to blow a bubble. But why be coy? I had woken in my old bedroom, in the house where I had spent the best part of my life…

Paul Theroux, American travel writer and novelist, whose best known works are The Old Patagonian Express and The Great Railway Bazaar, walks into one of the business rooms of the Taj Connemara where I am waiting. He gives me the impression of being a restless man, the sort who might well be a difficult interview customer. But then, the restlessness perhaps is an extension of his wanderlust.
In introducing myself to him, I tell him helpfully that my name rhymes with Srilanka. For the first ten minutes before we ease ourselves into the interview, he is asking me half a dozen questions about the civil war in that country and what people make of it…


Srilata: In The Old Patagonian Express, you have this line about travel being a vanishing act, while a travel book is the opposite, “the loner bouncing back bigger than life itself to tell the story of his experiment with space”. What makes you bounce back and tell that story of your travels? Don’t you ever find it burdensome – to have to come back and tell it all, the way one sometimes finds the camera a burden – or is it the eventual telling that drives you to travel in the first place?
Paul Theroux: When I am traveling, I am going with the motive of bringing as much back as possible. For instance, two years ago when I was in Chennai, I did a continuous trip – Uzbekistan to Jodhpur, Jaipur, Delhi, Amritsar, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and then Trichi and Colombo. Every day I woke up and wrote my notes intending to find out something about where I am. That is different from what I am doing on this trip. I am doing a lot of talking, very little listening. If I am planning to write a travel book, it is a mission. The travel writing is deliberate. So is the information gathering. I am offering myself as a sacrifice to experience…
Srilata: How do you approach fiction writing? For instance, in The Old Patagonian Express, you speak disapprovingly of the convention in some travel writing to start in the middle of things, landing the reader in a place you haven’t guided him to. You write of how travel really begins the second you wake up – for you are already headed for that foreign place…
Paul Theroux: It is a deliberate thing. Fiction again is deliberate. But with fiction, you are groping towards a conclusion of which you are unaware. So you have character, situation, story but you are never quite sure where you are going. That is the pleasure and also the anxiety of fiction. That you wake up in the morning and instead of going somewhere you are thinking -now what?
Srilata: What happens to the notion of plotting in your travel writing?
Paul Theroux: The plot of the travel book is its itinerary. It is a straight narrative of starting here and ending there. Travel writing is also a form of autobiography. I am writing about everything that happened to me, leaving very little out.
Srilata: The “I” in travel writing – doesn’t it become a character too?
Paul Theroux: Yes and you can pretend that you have a personality which you really don’t. But you can’t carry that off book after book. After a while, the truth comes out. In fiction, you can disappear…
Srilata: After all, both fiction and travel literature offer you ways of leaving the familiar behind or of seeing the familiar in fresh ways.
Paul Theroux: The Ice house in Chennai for instance… The ice came all the way from Maine, New England… It is a great connection between Chennai and the United States…
Srilata: How much do you read up about a place before you set off?
Paul Theroux: Quite a lot. But I don’t read travel books. I do factual reading, study maps. I like reading novels by people who live in a place and know all about it.
Srilata: It becomes apparent quickly enough that for you travel writing is not about pretty landscapes but about people. These people become vivid to us, vivid and sharp-edged. But you leave them behind, the way one doesn’t in fiction. There is not perhaps the same burden of pulling all the threads together, of relating what eventually becomes of these characters.
Paul Theroux: The English writer Pritchett – he wrote about Spain – he said that he was not really interested in churches and museums but in human architecture, the complexity of the people he met in Spain. I would say the same thing. The idea, as a travel writer, is to be an anonymous person. I talk to you, we talk about where you have been, what you have done, your family, your hopes, your experiences, your disappointments, your education, books you like… and then I go back and write it down or I write it down at the time. That is the stuff of writing. What I am doing now is the opposite. I am the focus of attention. That is a very bad thing for a traveler.
Srilata: Do you find that travel writing – more than fiction - frees you up to say what you wish, allows you a birds’ eye view of things?
Paul Theroux: Probably less. With travel writing, you have to stick to facts and you have to stick to chronology. You are a slave to the framework. There is much more freedom in fiction, much more invention. The writer can pretend to be anyone. You just need to be persuasive. But unless you are unusual, you can’t write fiction your whole career. George Simenon was an exception. He wrote 75 detective novels and 200 plus psychological novels. He was a serious novelist.
Srilata: You are a fairly prolific writer yourself… with 15 non-fiction and 31 fiction titles to your credit. Is that correct?
Paul Theroux: I have 43 books in all. But then I published my first book in 1967, have been at it forty years. I don’t have a full-time job. So I wake up in the morning and sit down to it…
Srilata: You did teach, didn’t you?
Paul Theroux: Yes, very early on. Since 1967, I have published a book every year. Some are longer than the others. Some more ambitious. Yes, if you google me, you will come up with a long list. But then, also, I am an old man!
Srilata: What does it all boil down to in terms of writing discipline? Hours a day, word counts, number of chapters…
Paul Theroux: I work every day when I am at home. Even when I am not at home. It involves having breakfast, reading the newspaper, doing the crossword and then working till lunch time. And then afternoons – I work too. I like working outside. I live in Hawaii and so I can
Srilata: Where you do some bee-keeping…
Paul Theroux: I am a bee-keeper and I raise geese.. Just in a friendly way! Not to be killed and eaten. Yes, my day is disciplined. No one is telling me to work but there is really nothing else to do. I have realized that if I don’t work, I am not making any money, not really emptying my mind. I feel I must be creative… Not just creative but busy. I grew up in a family where if my mother saw me not doing anything, she would prod me to work. There was a serious work ethic in my family. That is not always a great thing. It is a nuisance sometimes.
Srilata: You have done some work on Naipaul and he is one of your inspirations…
Paul Theroux: Yes, I would urge you to read my book Sir Vidia’s Shadow. Let me ask you something. You have done some work on Indian writers, Indian women writers… Naipaul in his book A Writer’s People has been fairly critical of Indian writers, Indian women writers. He attacks their novels which are mostly published in the U.A. He says they are about Indian women who go to the U.S and write about their families. They are writing these family novels. Who are they writing for? Who is going to read their books? It is attack, attack, attack…
Srilata: Well, Naipaul is not one of my favourites! And I feel, like others, that Naipaul has not really looked at Indian writers who write in the regional languages. Some of these writers cannot be globalised easily, marketed all over the world. But it doesn’t make their work less significant.
Paul Theroux: Yes, writing is a mirror that a person is holding up to his society. So he has a readership right here. But in criticism, you have got to read the most savage and Naipaul is provocative. But I agree with you totally.
Srilata: The sheer range of your writing is impressive from The Mosquito Coast which is an adventure story of a family that rejects its homeland and tries to find a happier and simpler life in the jungles of Central America to The Elephanta Suite. There is a lot of “India” in your books. Is there a unifying thread somewhere?
Paul Theroux: India is big, complex.. .Like the states with its West, East and empty spaces and complexities. America was created. It was a deliberate construction. It is based on the constitution, not on religion. India is an ancient place but in terms of largeness and complexity the two are similar. About the unifying thread, I am very fascinated by the idea of an isolated person. I was fascinated by the idea of a little American in Africa. But I haven’t analysed it too much. If you get too conversant with your work, you begin writing to prove that that is your theme. I don’t re-read my books. I try not to take in interest in the thematic or in motifs… I like to think that everything I write is new.
Srilata: What is it like to live in Hawaii, knowing that it is set up to cater to tourists? What do you feel about that, as a travel writer?
Paul Theroux: If you drive 40 miles north of Honolulu, you are in the countryside. Honolulu is a busy place. I live on a farm, six acres. I don’t see my neighbours. More than 7 million tourists come to Honolulu. You don’t see them. We have an efficient society that processes 7 million tourists and most local people don’t notice.
Srilata: One last question. A standard one: What would you tell aspiring writers? You are doing a workshop tomorrow on travel writing…
Paul Theroux: I would say: Go away from home. College doesn’t matter. But read. If you come from Chennai, go to Assam... The first thing is to go away. You need to be independent... Don’t stay home and take lessons on writing. Every night, you mother will say to you: “You are a great writer!” or “Get yourself a real job.”… Writers associated with colleges and universities tend to have a very different career. I am not saying that it is better or worse. But it helps to go away. More precarious, but in the long run, more satisfying.

Two Stories*

*Published in The BloodAxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (2008)


A thousand waves. How many? asks my son.
So how are we? the man asks, lips curling.
Lets say two thousand for fun
It is dark in the room and cold.
break every morning on these shores.
And whom did you sleep with today?
my beach with sands so happy they
And you, little fellow, have you failed me again?
slip through my fingers and dance on
the belt again, a fledgling dies
my toes, he says.
blood fills the evening tea cup
my beach I share with a thousand
I dream of lost skipping ropes,
Lets say two thousand for fun
of my daughter who hasn’t found them yet.
gay strangers.
Clouds unhappy like smoke rings near a grave
shovels, glow in the dark green bucket lost and found, a
float outside the house
handful of seashells clinging to the last of the sands,
where no cakes are baked,
a balloon
lampshades that sit heavily in the darkness
a fisherman sitting on a giddy catamaran
quite forgetting to fish.

Kamalamma *

*won the Gouri Mazumdar Poetry Prize in 2000 (published in Seablue Child, Kolkata: Brown Critique, 2002)

Kamalamma’s lips
betel-chewing red
some local lipstick
and a Friday night ritual.
A loan of endless forgetfulness
and scattered jasmine
breathing in partnership
scanty air from windows overlooking
other despairs.

Five sons (eight children) later
she is a cook at the union office.
Busy men fight causes.
Radicals abuse governments.
Kamalamma posts a thousand letters
licks as many stamps
mentions her husband’s muscular prowess
just in case
and serves out the tea.

Ten years.
The union is dead.
What has grown is Kamalamma’s drumstick tree
proving useful in a corner of the garden.

What Father Left Us*

*Won the first Prize in the Unisun British Council Poetry competition, 2006. (published by Unisun, Bangalore in Winners)



Father left us when we were children,
betraying our innocence
which, mother claimed,
trickled down our faces
like milk.
He left us each other -
two brothers and three sisters,
like so many Russian dolls,
our giggly yearnings
for rough play and stubble,
and blank spaces in five report cards
requesting “Father’s Signature”.
And then of course father left us mother,
with her soft saree
and taken for granted lap,
her voice cracking half-way through
that bed-time story about Ram and his monogamy.

Father left us a couple of unpaid debts
and this vacuum in my children’s lives
marked maternal grandfather.

Sarasu (shortlisted for The Little Magazine's New writing award)

“Akka, this oddiyanam is all of twenty sovereigns!1 Kamalam pati says so.” beamed Sarasu, “But I am not to wear it before the wedding – not even to see if it fits.” As a rule, I didn’t like oddiyanams much. Moreover, this one seemed ridiculously heavy for someone as fragile as Sarasu. I smiled diplomatically, looking enthusiastic for her sake.
I could feel my migrane coming on. It was the guilt, I think. The combined weight of all that knowledge… They were closing in on Sarasu. The wedding was almost upon us. What stung me most was my impotence. My job as a teacher, the modest income it gave me, the fact that I was respectably married and older than Sarasu by almost a decade – none of these things mattered. I was not part of that complex web of familial relationships that had suddenly sprung up around the wedding and around Sarasu. Sometimes, I found myself wishing I could do something truly awful – laugh hysterically for a full minute perhaps or badmouth Sarasu’s in-laws to their face – just so that they would look at me. I would have preferred their wrath to their polite indifference.
Kamalam pati was my mother-in-law’s second cousin. When her niece and her husband had died in a freak accident, Kamalam pati had surprised everyone by offering to adopt their orphaned daughter. And so eight year old Sarasu came to live with her. The child’s father – Raghavan - had had a flourishing business in silks. Raghavan’s will clearly stipulated that Sarasu would be able to access the bulk of his wealth and property only after she was married. He had nominated his eldest brother- Kunju periappa - as his daughter’s guardian.
On the first of every month, Kunju periappa would dutifully send Kamalam pati a money order for one thousand rupees – a princely sum in those days. My mother-in-law had recently aired her suspicions about Kunju periappa to me, “It is true that he was regular in sending Kamalam the money for Sarasu’s upkeep. But no one quite knows what he has done with the bulk of her fortune. Whenever Kamalam or I question him, he claims that it is all safely put away in bank F.Ds. But just tell me, where did he find the money for that huge palace that he has gone and built?” I felt deeply sorry for the innocent Sarasu. I thought of the flourish with which she always said, “Kunju periappa is like my own appa. He always buys me a dress when he comes to see me. You know, he says, ‘You will be a rich woman Sarasu when you get married. You will remember your Kunju periappa then, won’t you?’ As though I will ever forget him!” And now, it seemed that Sarasu would be in for a shock once she was married. If my mother-in-law was to be believed, the several crores of rupees that should have been hers, had dwindled to a measly couple of lakhs.
Sarasu was a rather plain looking young woman. The heavy glasses she wore did little to dispel this first impression of plainness. Sarasu had once lost a pair of contact lenses in the rough and tumble of a kabbaddi game. Kamalam pati had deemed her too careless to be trusted with anything so fragile and expensive. Somehow, it didn’t matter that the child had enough and more money in her name to throw away on a thousand other pair of lenses! Kamalam pati was deeply conservative and set in her ways. Wastage, she always declared, was not to be tolerated. Why spend so much money on a pair of contact lenses that couldn’t withstand a strong gust of wind when glasses would do just as well? In a way, I suppose, it was a relief to her that the boys left Sarasu alone.
Sarasu was an indifferent student. The basics of algebra always evaded her. She could not string five words together without flouting some rule of English grammar. As for history, Kamalam pati explained, she simply did not have a `memory’. Sarasu had struggled through school somehow, repeating a couple of years in the process. Kamalam pati and Kunju periappa had then urged her to register for a correspondance course in English. English was the `easiest’ subject after all. But Sarasu had already gone and failed a paper thrice! “What to do, akka? I have no interest in studying,” she said to me once with a characteristic toss of her head. I was struck by her nonchalance then – to fail in an exam was somehow unthinkable for me. But then Sarasu was like that – unfazed by any disaster that came her way. Even as a child, she had quietly accepted the fact of her parents’ death. She had made the transition to the stern Kamalam pati’s care with unusual grace. By now, the old woman was almost fond of her. It was easy to like Sarasu. She was affable and openly affectionate. She made friends easily. She was a person with no boundaries, no hard and fast rules. This scared me sometimes – her capacity to like everything and everybody.
Equally indiscriminate in her choice of clothes and jewellery, Sarasu would sometimes sport the most bizarre stuff. “So, you are in fancy dress again!”, I would tease her often and she would laugh. I vividly remembered the day she draped a nine yards saree around herself. It had belonged to her dead mother and had smelt strongly of moth balls.
Sarasu’s groom was a squat ugly looking man who worked as a clerk in a bank. I didn’t trust him – he was too shifty-eyed. His parents were aware of course of Sarasu’s sizeable fortune. But this hadn’t stopped them from insisting on a cash dowry of Rs.50,000 and on a hundred sovereigns of gold. They had also hinted strongly that they would expect Kamalam pati to look after her during her delivery. Kunju periappa and Kamalam pati had consented almost at once. The demands seemed fair enough, they said later, for a groom with a permanent job. “The girl may have money. But she is an orphan. There is no one to look out for her. Moreover, she is nothing much to look at and will never earn anything. It is best this way. At least we know this family and the boy does not appear to have any bad habits,” Kamalam pati and Kunju periappa had argued at the time. Secretly, I blamed them for caving in so soon, for literally choosing the first boy that came along. Maybe, Sarasu was not a beauty but she was lively and youthful. This boy, on the other hand, was distinctly ugly - I couldn’t help feeling repulsed by him. Would Kamalam pati and Kunju periappa have acted in such haste if Sarasu had been their own child? How different Sarasu’s life might have been had her parents been alive!
Soon, various aunts and uncles descended at Kamalam pati’s house. They came from all over the state and were seemlessly absorbed into the life of the wedding. Noticing my lost look, Sarasu’s aunt (on her father’s side) directed me to stuff mounds of haldi and kumkum into tiny plastic bags. As for Sarasu, she had disappeared into the maelstrom of “bride- making”. I heard someone say that she was getting her mehendi done at the moment.
On the day of the wedding, I overslept and consequently, missed the lakshmi pujai. I rushed to the mandapam in my second-best kanchipuram silk. Sarasu was looking strangely fragile that morning. She was wearing a rich purple gold brocade saree, a few dozen chains and necklaces, a pair of vankis and the oddiyanam. Several mozhams of jasmine adorned her hair. Through the smoke and the crowds of relatives pressing about her, she spotted me and waved. I waved back. I wondered how our relationship would keep after her marriage. Would we be able to meet occasionally and talk of this and that as we always did or would her domestic responsibilities swallow her up entirely? Would she be devastated by the knowledge that Kunju Periappa had not been entirely honest, that he had not carried out the trust that her father had placed in him? Would she be disappointed in the ordinariness of her husband? Would her father-in-law’s crass materialism shock her? Would the ruthless routine of domesticity destroy her vitality?
The sounds of “Gettimelam! Gettimelam!” filtered through into my consciousness. The nadaswaram and the tavil had suddenly burst into life. Like someone in a dream, I aimed a few grains of rice at the bride and the groom. Sarasu was now a married woman!
Sarasu’s sister-in-law was fussing with her tali when Sarasu started weeping. She wept with a force that astonished everyone. It was as though she was weeping for all time: for the bleak future that awaited her, for her dead mother whose softness she still carried in her heart, for her warm-hearted father who used to call her his rani, for the truth about Kamalam pati and Kunju Periappa that she had somehow intuited, for her own terrible vulnerability…
And as suddenly as she had begun, she fell silent again. In the stillness that ensued, everyone started talking - louder than ever.




1 A heavy ornament worn around the waist.

The State of Whiteness (The Shrinking Woman and Other Stories) Bangalore: Unisun, 2009) Shortlisted for the Unisun short story competition, 2008

Rano knew they were witches – the women who came visiting after His death. They smelt like witches and their feet didn’t touch the ground. They even had the slanting eyes and dry brown hair of witches. Rano felt her head. White flowers, instead of hair, covered her scalp in riotous profusion. She chided herself for noticing them only now for of course they had always been there. She took a moment to revel in their whiteness. Unknown to her family, she had always liked white. It was one of those things for which there is no clear reason. Rano could even hear white. It was the sound of snow falling, though she had never been within miles of snow all her life.
For the wedding, she had been clad in red. That was the only colour a bride was allowed. Her mother had been horrified when someone had suggested white glass bangles to contrast with the red ones Rano was to wear. She wanted her daughter to live the happy life of a suhaagan. And so it happened that Rano was trapped in a red bubble. Red sindoor. Red saris. Red bangles. Red bindis. Red cheeks. There was to be no place for white in her life. Now of course all that had changed.
Rano plucked a flower from her head. On examining it closely, she concluded that it was almost as white as snow – not quite but almost. She had heard Maamu speak of snow. Maamu who had been to Kedarnath in winter. He said snow was whiter than white. He said it was whiter than the paper he wrote his accounts on, whiter even than a white man’s face. Maamu knew many things. He knew, for instance, how to build a fire on a windy night and how the widows of Vrindavan sold their bodies to keep themselves alive.
Some years later, after she was married, Rano had had another encounter with snow. This time it was the picture of Mount Kanchenjunga printed on a sheet of old newspaper that had accidentally made its way into her hands. Rano had kept the picture, loving its snow-covered peak, marvelling especially at the way its whiteness stood out. She would have loved to paste it on the kitchen wall but her father-in-law did not approve of frivolity. Neither did He. So she had stowed it away carefully with her red bridal sari in the trunk her parents had given her. She had never really forgotten though, mentally revisiting its vibrant white for at least a few minutes in her warm and crowded day. From time to time, when He was not around and when the work of the kitchen did not entirely occupy her, she would take the picture out of the trunk and gaze at it. He had caught her at it once and chided her for wasting her time. Rano wondered what He would say to the white flowers that she now wore like a crown. He didn’t like flowers much. She smiled to herself triumphantly.
The witches were busy marauding her widows’ garden, looking for hair. All witches lusted after human hair. Rano wondered who else had been widowed recently. The witches must be all over their garden too.
Pluck, pluck, pluck. Each witch who came visiting left with what she thought was one strand of Rano’s hair. They all said the same thing – that it was the custom in the family – the run-up to the complete shaving of her head by the barber. But all the time Rano was laughing to herself. The witches hadn’t caught on to the fact that what they held in their hands was not Rano’s hair but white flowers. They would find out soon enough and leave her alone…
He had passed away on poornima. That night, the moon had been whiter than usual and it had three rings around it. The little black cat inside was barely visible. The whiteness had apparently swallowed it. Everyone said He would go straight to heaven. Those who died on poornima usually did. Moreover, He had been a good man, a kind and generous soul who hadn’t cast Rano aside even though she hadn’t borne him any children in all those ten years of wedded bliss. No one said a word of course about how ugly He was and how His lips twisted grotesquely when He smiled. The consumption had put a stop to everything. He had become increasingly irritable, insisting that she never leave His side. Yet He would eat only the chapathis made by her. He had been a difficult patient. Her father-in-law had been heart broken when He died and had stopped eating altogether. Rano had still not seen him face to face. Neither did she wish to. It would interfere too much with the whiteness.
On the day following her husband’s death, the first witch had come to offer her condolences. She had assumed the form of Sita Bhabhi, her sister-in-law. Witches did that, taking on different human forms. At first, Rano had believed that the woman who had come visiting was really Sita Bhabhi. Her tears had dried by then. ‘A widow must cry,’ the witch who called herself Sita Bhabhi advised, ‘What will people think otherwise?’ Then, just as she was leaving the woman put out her hand. Rano lowered her head to receive what she assumed was a blessing when she felt a sharp, searing pain the likes of which she had never experienced before. The witch held out a strand of hair from Rano’s head. ‘That is the custom in this family, Rano. Before a widow’s head is shaven clean, the women who visit her must pluck a strand of hair from her head. That way, the widow is fully prepared to face the barber on the thirteenth day.’ The witch had even sounded like Sita Bhabhi – cold, pragmatic, sensible. So Rano had learnt that this was the forerunner, the terrible forerunner to the barber’s knife. And she had laundered that terrifying knowledge into whiteness. She was in a garden surrounded by witches like Sita in Ashokavan surrounded by rakshasas and her hair had turned to white flowers.
The other witches had followed on the heels of the first, cleverly assuming the form of various relatives – cousins, aunts, her dead husband’s nieces who could not possibly have travelled all the way from Udaipur…. And each one of them had helped themselves to a white flower in keeping with family custom. Not all of them had been as matter-of-fact as her sister-in-law. Some had apologized even before the act. ‘What to do?’ they said, ‘All these customs…. Please bear with us.’ In the meantime, Rano had learnt to anticipate their move. She watched them from out of the corner of her eyes and usually saw their outstretched hand reaching for her head. She had decided not to scream and protest. She would be generous instead. Perhaps, like her, the witches too were in love with white flowers. And it didn’t hurt any more, not like it had the first time.
It is only the fifth day, her husband’s paternal aunt Chayyabuva had whispered, it will all pass. It did, for me. You will get used to it in time. This will be your life. White sari. Not eating meat and spices. Sleeping on the floor alone. All that hair-plucking that happens only in this family. That hurts, I know. But then those Rai Bahadurs still send their widows to the pyre. Your father-in-law is not that heartless.
At sixty, the feisty old widow whose in-laws had sent her packing to her brother’s house when her husband passed away was not doing too badly. She ate meat on the sly and it was rumoured that she even had a lover – though no one could be quite sure of his identity. At first, on seeing Rano the sea of feelings Buva had contained for so long had spilled forth. She had sobbed louder than Rano, thinking perhaps of her own dreary existence. But she had quickly composed herself and begun counselling Rano. What the old woman did not see was that Rano had entered a state of whiteness. The barber’s knife that she was to face in eight days, the searing pain that the witches caused her, the knowledge that she would never again be able to eat meat – none of this mattered to Rano any more…
The state of whiteness was lovely. Yards of white sari falling like snow. Crisp, frozen, cool. White flowers raining down on her. Like snow, they had no fragrance. She remembered suddenly that she didn’t know what the flowers were called and panicked. She didn’t want the whiteness to disappear for the lack of a name. She would call them Shwet – white. With that decision made, she felt better. She picked up a flower, caressed the softness of its petals, spoke to it tenderly. Flowers responded to love. Ma had told her that long ago. Ma who loved all flowering trees. She would have liked these flowers. Rano wondered when Ma would come. She longed to tell her about the state of whiteness. Ma, you were wrong after all. Red is not the only happy colour.
Buva was saying something. Buva was the only one around who was not a witch. She must give her one of those flowers. From one widow to another with love. She felt her head. It was bare. The crown of flowers was gone. The witches had plucked them all. The flowers that had fallen at her feet had withered in the heat. But she did not despair. She would flower again. She had not touched water all day long. The flowers needed water… water, water, Buva…. Her voice came in a hoarse whisper. Maybe someone else was speaking. Buva thrust a glass of water in her hand. Her hand had become a branch – the branch of a flowering tree. Water trickled down her face in a ritual bath. She was pure now as widows should be and soon the flowers would reappear. Was that Buva crying? Or was it Rano herself? Don’t cry, Buva. There will be another flower soon. Another one and then another one. You don’t have to sleep on the floor any more. I will make you a bed of flowers…
It was late in the night. Buva was fast asleep by her side. Rano stood up and walked towards her bedroom. Her sari fell about her like waves. She had to be careful not to wake the witches. They were all over the house now. The door to the bedroom creaked noisily. Luckily, no one came to investigate. She looked at the bed that had been stripped bare after His death. Did it miss the warmth of their bodies – hers and His? She looked under the cot. The trunk was still there where she had left it. She dragged it out and dusted it with the edge of her pallu. Then she unlocked it with the keys she wore around her waist. They had not yet taken those away. The picture was still there. She held it to her bosom and let the snow quench the heat that rose in her body. Carefully, lovingly, she placed it back in the trunk. She picked up the bridal sari next and took it to the kitchen. Around her a column of whiteness moved. She had never felt happier. Red would soon turn to white.
At first the flames were feeble. There was a strong breeze that night. But eventually, Rano was able to build a stronger fire that blazed red and angry. There was a bit of Maamu in her and the kerosene helped. The fire was red too like the sari that first fed it. Rano stood there with a smile playing on her lips. The flames felt cool. Rano was playing in the snow, dressed in white. The witches had disappeared. They had probably smelt the fire. But one couldn’t be too careful. She walked all over the house with the can of kerosene and a box of matches and the flames followed her everywhere. She didn’t see anyone nor did anyone see her. Slowly, she heard the screams…Buva, her father-in-law, the servants….
Everything was going to be alright. They would soon turn to ash. Ash like snow would be cool and she, Rano, would have helped them enter whiteness. She felt a sudden twinge of regret when she thought of her trunk with the picture in it. That would perish too. But then she knew it had no life outside her own…. She stood amidst the blaze hearing snow.
The state of whiteness would live on.

In Santa Cruz, Diagnosed Homesick*

* won the first prize in the All India Poetry Competition conducted by the British Council and the Poetry Society, India in 1998)

At the gift shop by the wharf
I bought an indigo octopus
all arms…
I, a new comer to this
out-of –the-way white-hippie town
settle into the sea.
My two-month hostility melts
even as I see what divides me from home
more clearly than I did from my airless plane.

The sea know ways of connecting too,
of fluidly hugging,
in long-armed benevolence,
the puzzle-edges of vast continents.