The Temple Is Not My Father: A Story Set in India Read online

  THE TEMPLE IS NOT MY FATHER

  by

  RASANA ATREYA

  Copyright 2014 Rasana Atreya

  For my grade school children, Sunaad and Aamani Gurajada, who really, really wanted to design the cover of this book. Because I wouldn’t let them, they wrote, illustrated and published their own book.

  For my parents.

  Part I

  “Is the Goddess your husband, Amma?”

  Godavari smiled at her young daughter. “No, she’s not.”

  “But you’re married to her.”

  Godavari nodded. Years ago, when she still believed in goodness and decency and all that foolishness, her father had dressed her in bridal finery and walked her through the streets of their village. She skipped along, feeling important and pretty in her brand new clothes. It wasn’t every day that a girl got married – and to the Goddess herself! The only irritant was Godavari’s own mother. She followed them, wailing and beating her chest, grabbing her husband’s arm every once in a while, falling at his feet, making a complete nuisance of herself.

  Why couldn’t her mother understand that this was an honour, something bestowed upon only a chosen few? Why did she have to ruin everything special that Godavari’s father tried to do for her?

  Godavari forced a grin on her face, trying to ignore her mother’s embarrassing behaviour. But her mother only wailed harder. Godavari entwined her fingers with her father’s, swinging his hand as high as it would go. She called out to the villagers lining the road to the temple but the men clapped their hands to their mouths and the women hid their faces behind their saris. Meanwhile, Godavari’s mother continued with her wailing.

  “Amma?” Sreeja asked, snapping Godavari back from the past. “When did you get married?”

  Godavari leaned back against the trunk of the scrawny guava tree and sighed. “A long time ago.”

  In their tiny enclosed courtyard, with its packed-mud floor and ten-foot-high cow dung-coated walls, the narrow metal built-in gate their only access to the world outside, she pondered her life. Though the high walls kept the world out, it also caged the two of them in. But it was important that she remember that no matter how small the house – front room, bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, all interconnected and opening into their miniscule courtyard – it was hers, and hers alone. And, no matter how hard her life, she was so much better off than other women in her situation.

  “Is the temple my father?”

  Startled, Godavari laughed. “What gave you that idea?”

  “You’re married to it.”

  “Yes, but the temple isn’t your father.”

  Sreeja twirled her braid with a finger. She seemed to be in deep thought. “You’re married to two things. How can that be?”

  Godavari lifted Sreeja onto her lap, savouring her little girl smell. “I was dedicated to Goddess Yellamma. Some people call that being married to the Goddess, others call it being married to the temple.”

  “That’s a good thing, right?”

  Was it? A long time ago, being married to the Goddess was indeed an honour. This was back when classical dance and music were an integral part of temple worship. Then, women like her enjoyed a high status in society.

  “Amma?” Sreeja prodded.

  “Yes, it’s a good thing.”

  “Then why do the villagers make faces when they say it?” A tear, perfectly formed, teetered at the edge of one of Sreeja’s beautiful brown eyes.

  “Oh child!” Godavari pulled Sreeja closer, her heart overflowing with love for this child of hers. Soon – too soon – she’d be old enough to know what those taunts meant.

  Sreeja buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. “Everyone else has a father at home. How come we don’t?”

  Godavari ran a loving hand over her daughter’s hair. “You have a grandfather who loves you.”

  “But he’s not my father.”

  She should have seen this coming. She should have been prepared with an answer.

  “I do have one.” The child looked up at her mother. “Don’t I?”

  The cautious, hopeful tone of her daughter broke Godavari’s heart anew. She was married to the temple, but it wasn’t the temple that had put the baby in her belly.

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know,” Godavari said softly.

  Sreeja whimpered in distress.

  Godavari hated the lies, but what choice did she have?

  She wrapped the free edge of her sari around them both and buried her face in Sreeja’s hair, wishing that there was some way she could protect her child from the pain and stigma that were headed her way as surely as the village chief’s filthy eyes defiled Godavari each time she had the misfortune to cross paths with him.

  Sreeja raised her head. Using the back of her hand to wipe away the tear, she looked into her mother’s eyes. “How come you have no wedding photos?”

  Because her wedding was no wedding.

  “Your grandfather forgot the camera,” Godavari said.

  More lies. But why should her young daughter have to experience disillusionment at such a tender age?

  Knock! Knock!

  Pleasure replaced the pain in Sreeja’s eyes. “Tataiyya?”

  Godavari nodded. Other than her father, no one ever knocked on her door. Not in broad daylight, that is.

  Sreeja jumped down from her mother’s lap. Godavari watched as she pranced her way to the door. Soon her child’s innocence would vanish; her innocence would follow.

  “Tataiyya!” Sreeja jumped on her grandfather, almost knocking him to the ground.

  “You and I both,” Godavari’s father said, laughing, “are getting too old for this.”

  “You're not old.” She wrapped her legs around his waist and leaned back, squinting. “Are you?”

  Godavari’s father laughed again. “I am a grandfather, therefore I’m old.”

  “Sreeja, child, let Tataiyya breathe,” her mother said.

  Sreeja unwrapped her legs and slid down. “What did you get me?” She thrust her hands in the pockets of his long, flowing kurta and came away empty. “No gift?” Tears hovered. “But it’ll be my birthday in three days! I’ll be eight years old! You said you’d get me something special from the city. You promised!”

  “Silly girl,” Tataiyya said, tweaking her nose. “Close your eyes.” He wagged a finger. “No peeking.”

  Sreeja closed her eyes tightly. “Hurry up, Tataiyya.”

  Godavari smiled as her daughter danced on one foot, then the other, unable to bear the suspense.

  Sreeja splayed her hands against her face and slowly opened an eye – and looked into the grinning face of her grandfather. “What is it? What is it?”

  “Where's my kiss?” he demanded, waving a package just out of reach.

  Sreeja planted a smack on his cheek and grabbed the package. Falling on the straw mat under the tree, she tore the packet open. A shiny fabric of the smoothest silk fell out. “New clothes!”

  “Wear it and show me.”

  Sreeja shook the dress open. A full-length skirt, a midriff-length sari blouse, a long piece of silk. Throwing the skirt and blouse aside, she draped the silk around herself in an approximation of a sari. She rooted around for the matching bangles and slid them on. A bright bottu on her forehead, new hairclips on the sides of her braids and she was ready.

  “Amma!” She twirled around, a wide smile on her chubby little face. “Don’t I look pretty?”

  “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.” Godavari smiled at her daughter’s exuberance.

  “Here’s something else for you!” He gave God
avari a quick look before digging into his cloth shoulder bag.

  Godavari watched as her father’s hand emerged from the bag, one inch at a time. Her eyes spotted something familiar. Her belly tightened. He wouldn’t dare!

  He held a distinctive piece of jewellery, white and delicate.

  Voice harsh, she said, “What’s the meaning of this?”

  “What do you mean?” he stammered. “It’s a pretty dress for my pretty little granddaughter.”

  “Not the dress. That.” She threw her head in the direction of the white shell necklace.

  “Amma!” Sreeja tugged at her mother's hand, looking small and scared.

  Godavari gave her a reassuring pat before turning back to her father.

  He wouldn’t look her in the eye. “I thought, perhaps, that it was time…”

  She tore the jewellery from his grasp and hurled it against the dung-coated wall of her courtyard, where it broke apart with a satisfying thwack. When she turned to her father, her voice was hard. “Get out of my house!”

  “But –”

  “Out!”

  He stalked out, slamming the gate behind him.

  “Amma!” Sreeja tugged at Godavari’s hand.

  Godavari knelt and drew the trembling girl into her arms. “What, child?”

  “Now we don’t have a grandfather, either?”

  Godavari wrapped her arms around her daughter and carried her to the cot by the guava tree. She ran a hand over her daughter’s back in gentle circles, trying to find a way to tell her – tell her what? That her grandfather was a slimy, slithering snake of the worst kind?

  Sreeja looked up at her mother, her beautiful eyes looking wounded. “Tataiyya never hurt us. He made us laugh. Why did you send him away?”

  Because the distinctive white-shell jewellery he’d brought for his loving, trusting, innocent granddaughter was the mark of the devdasi – the bastard wanted to dedicate her to the Goddess!

  Godavari shook her head, trying to clear it of the outrage. “Because he did something bad.”

  “What did he do?”

  She kissed her child’s forehead. “Someday you’ll understand,” she said.

  “And I hope that day is far, far away,” she prayed.

  ><<>><

  Fifteen minutes after her father slammed the gate, there was another knock. Godavari jumped to her feet. She strode to the door and yanked it open. “You bloody man! You –”

  “Oops! Looks like we came at a bad time?”

  Godavari looked at the girls standing in front of her, probably fourteen and fifteen, the younger one in t-shirt and shorts! Other than in movies, what girl ever wore such indecent clothes? “What do you want?” she barked.

  Sreeja sidled up to Godavari, her small hand creeping into her mother’s.

  “We’re bored. Can we come in?”

  “Why do you talk funny?” Sreeja piped in.

  The girl laughed. “Because we’re from America and we talk mostly in English, our Telugu has become funny. My name is Vanaja and this is my sister.” She pointed with her head. “Neeraja.”

  “Why are you wearing boys’ clothes?”

  “Because, in America, it is okay for girls to wear boys’ clothes.”

  “Do boys wear girls’ clothes, then? Half-saris?”

  Vanaja laughed again. “No, boys have to wear boys’ clothes, but girls can wear both. Back home we do wear half-saris to the temple.”

  “America isn’t our home,” her sister said softly. “Not anymore.”

  Vanaja’s face lost its animation.

  Neeraja looked down at Sreeja, a gentle smile on her face. “Don’t you watch TV? Haven’t you seen girls in shorts before?”

  “What she sees on TV is a fairy tale to her. Nothing to do with real life,” Godavari said brusquely. “You should leave. This isn’t a place for decent people.”

  “You look fine enough to me.”

  “You’re supposed to stay away. Did no one tell you?”

  “Of course, they did!” Vanaja raised her chin in defiance. “Why do you think we came?”

  “Do your parents know you’re here?”

  Vanaja pointed a hand – her nails alternately painted purple and black – at the double-storied building a few houses away. “That’s our grandmother’s house. Our parents dumped us there. Can we come in?”

  Godavari gave the girls a long look. “You’ll get in serious trouble.”

  Vanaja rolled her eyes. “Like we care.”

  Godavari sighed. “You’d better come in before someone sees you on my doorstep and your reputations are ruined.” She closed the door after the girls stepped in.

  “Why aren’t we supposed to come to your house?” Vanaja asked.

  “Because we’re low-caste people.”

  “How low?”

  “Lower than low,” Godavari snapped.

  But that girl, Vanaja, it didn’t seem much could stop her. She strolled over to the cot and fell on it. “Untouchables? Calling someone that is a crime, you know. So says the Government of India.”

  Godavari winced, both from the words and the sound of distress her ancient cot made. Did the girl have no sense of propriety, lolling around on a bed like that? In public? In the middle of the day?

  “Is it because you’re married to the temple that we’re supposed to avoid your house?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Sorry,” Neeraja mumbled, her face turning red. “My sister’s tongue does tend to run away.”

  Sreeja inclined her head, trying to peer into Vanaja’s mouth.

  Vanaja laughed. “My tongue stayed home today.”

  Sreeja hid her face in her mother’s sari.

  “Were you born into a low caste,” Vanaja said, “or did they turn you into one?”

  Godavari gave a short laugh, almost amused by this persistent child. “My grandfather and your grandmother are brother and sister.”

  Vanaja sat up. “No way!”

  Godavari frowned at the funny mix of English and Telugu, then decided that even the mangled Telugu the girl spoke was enough to convey what she meant.

  “That means you’re not as low caste as you like to pretend,” Vanaja said.

  Neeraja frowned at her sister.

  “Do you always say the first thing that pops in your head?” Godavari asked.

  “Pretty much!” Vanaja said cheerfully. “So, what’s the deal?”

  “When my father married me off to the temple, your grandmother cut all ties with our family.”

  “Whoa! So Grandma never spoke to her brother again?”

  Godavari shook her head. “My father’s actions shamed the entire family and automatically lowered me in the eyes of society. I don’t blame them. Cutting us off was their only option. How else could they retain respect?”

  “Why was that the only option?” Neeraja looked like she was the older sister and the more sensible of the two.

  Godavari gave her daughter a quick glance. “I’ll tell you someday.” If that day ever came. The moment the grandmother found out that these girls had set foot in Godavari’s house, they’d get hauled back to wherever it was they’d come from. She turned toward the house. “I have work to do.”

  Neeraja got the hint. “We should go.”

  “Why?” Vanaja stretched out on the cot. “It’s not like anyone’s dying for our company.”

  Neeraja widened her eyes at her sister, trying to signal her intent to leave, but the younger girl ignored her.

  It was on the tip of Godavari’s tongue to order the girls back home, but Vanaja beat her to it. “I know you’re going to tell us to leave, but please don’t! We’re bored. It’s vacation. There’s nothing to do. Why don’t you do your work and we’ll help your daughter practice school work for next year. It’ll be good for me, too. Otherwise my brain cells will wither away in this god-awful heat.”

  “She doesn’t go to school.”

  “What!”

  “She is not enrolled in
school.”

  “Why on earth not? Don’t you want her to get an education? Do well in life?”

  “Of course I do!” Godavari snapped. “Do you think I choose to condemn my daughter to an existence like mine?”

  “One of those ‘married to temple’ things, hanh? Oh well. You do whatever you have to do and we’ll teach your daughter – what’s her name?”

  “Sreeja.”

  “Hey, this is meant to be!”

  “What do you mean?” Godavari was puzzled.

  “Vana-ja, Neera-ja, Sree-ja. Get it? The ‘three-jas.’ We’ll teach Sreeja English and math. How about that?”

  Godavari thought it over. Why not? It would do her daughter good to spend some time with other children, stuck inside the courtyard as she was. It wasn’t easy on a child when people saw her coming and hurried over to the other side of the road. Besides, these girls wouldn’t be back. That much she knew. She nodded her acceptance.

  As Godavari walked into the house, she could hear Vanaja say, “All right! Let’s get some basics down. What’s your mother’s name?”

  And her daughter said, “My mother’s name is Godavari, like the beautiful river. And the temple is not my father.”

  ><<>><

  Later that night, as Sreeja got ready for bed, she said, “It was fun today, with Neeraja akka and Vanaja akka.”

  Godavari smiled. Sreeja had bonded enough with the girls that she was adding ‘older sister’ to both their names.

  “We don’t have a father. We don’t have a grandfather, either. Why don’t we go away to some place where people are nice? We could make friends, find a new father for our family.”

  If only. Godavari felt a pang of ache. She tucked her daughter in, trying to hide her distress.

  ><<>><

  Knock! Knock!

  Godavari and Sreeja looked at each other. A knock at 9:30 in the morning? Godavari went up to the gate and cautiously unlatched it. Before she could open it fully Vanaja fell in, pulling her sister behind her.

  “Don’t want to get into trouble,” she said, grinning. “Can’t let anyone see us.” She bounded over to the cot under the guava tree and fell on it with her usual lack of decorum.

  Godavari closed the gate and leaned against it. “Didn’t I tell you coming over could get you in serious trouble?”