Kanto

At fifteen, I was a foolish and fierce girl, and already married for a year.

It was a Monday, the day after the grand inauguration of the newly consecrated church in our village. I wanted to complete my chores as quickly as I could, and not let the exhaustion of the previous week’s chop-stir-cook for the inauguration slow my step. I fastened the noose around Helga Voni’s water pot, or kolso, and readied to draw water from the well, when I heard Feddy Bouji, my brother-in-law, cursing, “Maari, why don’t you use your own kolso to draw water?”

That was a long time ago. Almost six decades.

Helga Voni is turning eighty-five today. Two hundred guests are expected for the dinner party in her honor. She is five years older than me. Neither of us know exactly when we were born, but I had heard my mother say that I was born the year the German missionaries built the Basel hospital in the big town Kodial. That’s how I know I am eighty.

“You must have a good memory Mai,” my granddaughter Bulla says, and I laugh.

“No memory-shmemory. It is inscribed on the arch above the gate of the hospital.

Mullers Hospital, 1890.”

“You can read?” Bulla asks, and stops combing my hair bending forward to look at me.

“What do you think of your mai? Of course. How can you count money if you can’t read numbers?” I register Bulla’s surprise and continue my story.

The saree, Bulla has chosen for me has dual shades of mustard and sapota. She insists that I adorn my hair with a string of jasmine flowers and wear my kanto, my hairpin. When I tell her that the kanto won’t stick on my scant hair, she wants to fasten it with modern hair clips.

“Modern kanto to keep the olden-day kanto in place,” I declare to Bulla. “Modern mai wears a modern kanto”, Bulla replies quickly, and we both laugh.

“The kanto needs a beautiful face and long thick hair like yours,” I say, but she pretends not to hear, and continues to fidget with my hair. I keep my head still while she pokes into her collection of colored hair pins and chooses one that matches the saree.

I used to have beautiful long hair like Bulla has now.

Bulla removes the shiny kanto from its velvet box, and gently unwraps the soft linen cloth. It is four inches long, with a crest carved in ivory and 22 karat gold. On the crest’s head is the dove depicting the Holy Spirit. The dove, or minin is perched on a globe decorated with rosettes, a fleur-de-lis with Burmese red rubies, and four pearl- encrusted crosses. On the dove’s outspread wings are delicate filigree gold feathers. The eyes of the dove are inlaid with green enamel. Extending from the crest are two slender, carved, gold teeth, two-inches long, tapering like the blade of a sword, with dull edges on both sides, that slide perfectly into my silken hair. In my whole life, I have never seen another like it.

“You will look like a beauty queen.” Bulla takes a step back, makes a show of circling her hand around the crown of my head three times, and cracks her knuckles against her temples to cast out the evil eye as if I were her grandchild.

“Cinderella, Vodli Maiella, you are now ready for Helga Voni’s party”, Bulla declares to the empty room as if we are in an arena filled with spectators.

When I first saw Helga Voni, she reminded me of the Virgin Mary, her face white and round. Her words were like the taste of a sweet yellow mango when she was kind, and a fiery red chili, a jirgi mirsank, when she flushed with anger. She grew up in a convent, and knew a few English words, and used them when she was angry. Everyone knew not to ask about her parents, because she was abandoned at the convent by an unwed mother.

I was fourteen, when the matchmaker brought the proposal of Lawry Aab. He lived in a house built with sun-baked mud bricks, and shared the home with his older brother Feddy Bouji, and Feddy’s wife, Helga Voni. They lived a decent life off the land, harvesting rice, areca nuts, and pepper. They owned a few heads of cattle, poultry, and a herd of pigs. There was no meddling mother-in-law, the matchmaker had said.

It was Voni who taught me cooking, cleaning, and patting the dung cakes for fuel. I was a new bride and wasn’t adept at chores nor farm labor, but Voni showed me how to scrape the dung off the floor of the cowshed using a dried areca nut leaf, then to drop it in the pile behind the shed, where flies swarmed around it. It made me nauseous, and I complained once, just once, to Voni, when I thought she was in her mango mood. But that day Bouji had already been nasty to her, and she turned her sharp tongue at me, calling me a rani who found no dearth of excuses to work in the house. After that, I learnt how to swoop the dung in one brisk action and dump it swiftly behind the shed.

On that Monday after the parish church inauguration, Voni was in the fields harvesting the areca nut. I had my chores and hers to complete before she returned.

Only Voni knew that I was with child. She wanted me to wait until I completed three months before sharing the good news with Lawry Aab. There was no need to get him excited until the pregnancy was safely well into the second trimester. The pregnancy did not show, and while I set out to draw water from the well, which was really only a hole in the center of the yard, I told myself the exhaustion was only in my mind.

Bouji was busy cleaning the cowshed. The cow had just borne some calves and I could smell the fresh dung mixed with hay. The dogs were curled up in their corner under the shade, the hens roamed and picked at worms around the yard. I used Voni’s kolso, which was larger than mine, to save me a few trips. It was a sunny day; there were just enough abolis and jasmines on the bushes to make a string for Voni and me.

At the well, lost in the sounds of the low hum of life in the cowshed, and the breeze carrying conversations from the neighboring fields, the sound of Bouji’s cursing distracted me from my thoughts. The kolso slipped from its noose and crashed into the well.

When I looked up, I could see Bouji heading towards me, calling me Maari, a bastard.

I don’t remember exactly how I retorted, but I still can feel the sting on my right cheek from his forceful slap. It took me a moment to steady myself. I called him names, damned him and the kolso, and I may even have called him a bevarso (a male bastard) for raising his hand to a woman. He said more things, but my ear was numb and buzzing from the slap, and so I raised my voice. I used words that he used on me, some whose meaning I was yet to find out, infuriating him further. I was unaware of the consequences that were to come later that day.

“What kind of a man are you? Can’t you get into the well and bring that kolso out yourself?” I called after him as he walked off, threatening to make me pay for the kolso, and promising to teach me a lesson.

That day only became worse as I headed to the kitchen to cook lunch.

Voni and I usually cooked lunch together—well, mostly Voni did, and I followed her instructions mindlessly. I should’ve paid more attention when she added the salt to the kongee. I scooped the salt from the jar into the palm of my hand, and accidentally tipped the jar over. I hurriedly scooped the salt off the floor and cleaned it up with a kitchen rag, so there would be no trace of the bad omen. Aab returned from the fields. Bouji had rushed out to the fields to bring him home to thrash me.

Aab dragged me by the hair to the middle room with the altar. “Are you going to call my brother a peto?” he repeated as he swung the whip he used in the water buffalo races. I called him worse, but maybe Bouji did not want to acknowledge that a woman called him such names, or maybe Aab was too embarrassed to mention them. I vowed silently to destroy that whip, and all the whips that hung on the wall next to his trophies. But sense prevailed, for those sticks and whips were hard to find, and it would mean more beatings to endure if they were to go missing or were found broken. After the beating Aab headed to the fields and Bouji to the cowshed. I found my way into the kitchen, sat on the floor, and rekindled the embers to cook lunch. My arms hurt while I poured the water into the cooking pot and placed it on the stove. As the water came to a boil, I looked under my saree, and saw the marks left by the whip snaking around my calves and my chest. The back of my neck felt like it was on fire when my fingers touched it. I thought of the pain I have to endure during my bath.

As I sat in the kitchen, the frothy starch water boiled over from the rice pot, and I realized that I had added too much rice into the pot, so I hurriedly scooped out half the rice, leaving the first batch to cook while I brought another pot of water to boil. Just as I was scooping out the rice, Voni entered and her eyes fell on the rice, the two pots of boiling water, and she pushed me away to salvage the lunch. As she did this she complained about the rice, my upbringing, my laziness, the cost of the kolso, the starving cows and how Bouji and she should’ve found a better wife for Aab.

“Will your Baab, your father, reimburse the cost of this rice? Who is going to eat this now? The pigs?”

It was at that moment that I walked out of the kitchen, into my room, opened my trunk, pulled out the kanto and my money pouch from under my clothes, and stormed back into the kitchen. Bouji was in the kitchen by then, complaining about the mushy kongee. I flung my kanto at Helga Voni and the 300 rupees at Bouji and told them to buy a new kolso, to eat up my portion of lunch, and to fill their greedy bellies. Then I went straight back into my room, closed the door, and fastened the bolts.

The next day my body burned with a high temperature, and I lost the baby. Voni took over my chores and she became like a mango once again. She applied congress weed salve, that grew outside, to my welts, and made me jaggery tea. She returned the kanto to me and said, “A woman should always have a piece of jewelry and some money.”

My fever lasted three days. Bouji and Aab moved around like thieves. They knew that Voni was in a jirgi mirsank mood. She threatened to throw away the whips and the shiny trophies into the dung pile behind the cowshed and dared them to ask her to shine the trophies with tamarind juice, as they did from time to time to show them off to visitors.

The next day, Aab became obsessed with the buffalo. I guess it is how men show remorse. Every morning, he set out for the fields, he washed the buffalo, and ran in the slushy paddies to prepare for the Kambala, the water buffalo race. On the fourth day, when my fever let off, I went to the edge of the yard, and through the gap in the canopy of the trees, I saw Aab, barefoot in the flooded fields, wearing only his headband and loin cloth. Both were splashed with mud, and he was sprinting with the buffaloes, matching their speed. Winning the Kambala played on his mind all day. While Bouji sipped tea, Aab’s own tea grew cold, while he talked about his opponents, the buffalo, and their diet. He carried an animal scent; his mind remaining faraway in the watery field, racing and running alongside the winning buffalo, sprinting and whipping them, even in his dreams.

After a week, the welts began to fade. Aab loitered around the kitchen while we prepared dinner. Voni noticed and mumbled that she needed to pluck some chilies from the yard, leaving the two of us alone in the kitchen. He hadn’t spoken to me since the beating. He cleared his throat and spoke about the buffalo losing weight, the races, and the price of hay. In the past, I would’ve told him to find a new grazing pasture for the buffalo, but I held my tongue and waited for him to finish speaking. He stopped, and I understood that he was waiting expectantly for me to again offer him the 300 rupees dowry money. I stoked the fire in the stove and told him that the money was now in Bouji’s hands. He stormed out, cursing God for not giving women brains.

A while later I heard him arguing with Bouji in the yard. When Bouji and Aab depleted their anger towards each other, they turned on Voni and me about the unattended dung mound. Voni told them they could make their own dung cakes and pave the yard instead of arguing like drunks.

Truth was, Voni and I were both tired of making dung cakes with our bare hands.

By the time we got the yard floor paved with layers of wet dung, it was half-an-inch thick, right up to the mouth of the well, and the entire house smelt of dung. I smelt dung all around me, in my clothes, in the air. Even when I walked through the forest to go to the next village, the smell stayed with me, around me, in the follicles of my skin and in my hair.

After Voni’s declaration that we would not pave the yard with dung, the two of us hired someone to make the dung cakes and started selling them. Aab tried to find out where I hid the profits; he searched the trunk, my clothes, and once I caught him opening tins in the kitchen, cursing and claiming hardships, but he never looked behind the image of the Virgin Mary above the altar.

When I had recovered from the loss of my child, I told Voni that I was the luckiest person to have her as my voni. She scolded me for casting the evil eye upon myself, and hurried to gather some onion and garlic peels, chilies and mustard seeds. She then summoned me to the brick stove, circled her right hand thrice over my head and around my left and right side until she was sure that all the evil was siphoned, and tossed the onion, garlic, mustard seeds and chilies into the embers as she waited for the hissing sound.

The following month Voni was with child. During her pregnancy, she craved tender coconut water. When our husbands left to the fields, I would fasten my saree like a pantaloon, climb the shorter coconut trees, and plucked the most tender of the coconuts, then I would use my sickle and carve a hole on the top of the coconut for both of us to drink from while we sat in the shade on the bench outside the kitchen. I did more chores so Voni could rest. I milked the cows, dried and pared the areca nuts, prepared the fields for sowing and planting, and managed the kitchen.

We started selling tender coconuts- not many, that would have got us in trouble. Whenever someone came by asking for a tender coconut for their sick child or relative, I plucked it for them and never asked for money in return, but they would always stuff it in my palm. If I showed my anger at their insistence, they would quietly leave the money on the bench outside the kitchen or find a way of returning the favor. If we found Aab or Bouji staring at a young coconut tree, wondering if it was missing a tender coconut, we would tell them that someone stopped by for their sick relative.

But things changed once Voni’s baby was born. Maybe I should’ve prayed over Voni to ward off the evil eye, as she had done with me, because when her baby was born, it cried all the time and never latched on. Voni became tired and irritable, and snapped at all of us. She grew bitter, and called me vain. When she spotted a speck of dust on the leg of the almirah, she blamed my upbringing.

I stopped attending Sunday Mass after the baby was born, but one day Voni asked me to go into town on Sunday to pick up a rag doll that my mother had promised her. She hoped that the toy would distract the baby from its tormented crying.

I spent the whole week preparing for that Sunday because I wanted to look my best. My pink rose saree matched the color of the rose in the yard, so I chose it over my bright red one. After I cleaned up the dust and mold that had grown on them, the sandals I wore on my wedding day looked new. Sunday morning arrived and I milked the cows, prepared the coffee and called out to Voni, who snapped at me for waking her and disturbing the baby. When she saw that I was wearing the kanto; she grumbled about the selfishness of barren brides. I bit my tongue and ignored her.

Holding my sandals in my hand, I walked through the forest with its sludge and muck. When the path became firm, I cleaned and dusted the soles of my feet on the wet blades of grass and then slipped my sandals back on. At the edge of the forest woodland, I fell into procession alongside the other church goers. When I reached the church, I found my mother and sat next to her. After Mass, I savored the delicious sannan, the steamed rice cakes, she had made. She packed some for the family, and I set off with the rag doll in my cloth bag and a bunch of bananas. The smell of soft sannas made me think of tea that evening. Voni loved sannas with tea. It would cheer her up, I thought.

When I reached the forest, I used the stem of a dried bush to fasten my sandals onto the bunch of bananas, and walked as fast as I could, stopping only to take breaks. I moved the heavy bag from the left to the right hand as its weight cut into my wrists. It must’ve been three o’clock, and I knew that Voni would’ve been expecting me at least an hour earlier. She would surely complain about my selfishness and accuse me of dawdling while her baby was ill, but I was sure that once she saw my arms filled with the bananas and the soft sannas, she would become like a mango again. It was a long time since I massaged Voni’s hair with coconut oil, so that evening while she rested, after having the sannan and the jaggery tea, I planned to massage her hair and her feet. Distracted by my thoughts, I tripped on a tree stump, and the bananas and I tumbled over each other, my head hitting the stump and the kanto digging into my skull. I sat for a while until I saw my surroundings clearly; the rag doll was out of the bag, the sannas were still intact, but some of the bananas were bruised. A sudden fear filled me and the forest seemed much darker, so I gathered the bag with the rag doll stuffed in it, and ran the rest of the way home.

When I reached home there was a crowd outside the house. They parted ways for me as I made my way inside. When I entered the middle room, I saw the baby on the bench placed underneath the altar. Voni was on the floor in her turmeric-stained nightie, her back against the wall, her torso twisted towards the bench, her hands and head resting next to the head of the baby. I came closer and dropped the pothel, causing the top of the rag doll to spill out of it. Without raising her head, she sensed my presence.

I could see myself then as she saw me then, dressed in my pink rose saree, the shining kanto still in my hair, my toenails painted with cheap nailpolish showing through my red bridal sandals, my tummy full of my mother’s chicken curry and soft sannas, a barren bride who could not conceive for three years and who had cast an evil eye on her. Voni spat out all her grief and venom on me.

She had left the child on the mat while she dozed off, and the child had crawled out onto the cow dung-caked courtyard into the rimless well.

I wanted to give her something to make her pain go away, but I had nothing to offer but the kanto.

When, after six months, Voni was with child again. I placed the kanto on her, but she returned it, saying she will not accept a gift from a barren bride. It was clear that we couldn’t stay in the same house, so Bouji and Voni moved to the south side of the property. This time Aab gave my kanto to Bouji to raise money to build the house.

A few months after they moved out, two things happened: I became pregnant and Aab almost died.

I was five months pregnant when the monsoons abated, and Bouji and Aab had decided to partition the fields. The grass all around our home was knee-high and wild, the overgrowth of tall blades threatened to take over every visible sign of the path. Every day, Aab walked over to the path with his sickle to get rid of the tall grass, but the next day they were back again. One day, while he was cutting the grass with the sickle, he felt a sting. He hadn’t realized what happened, but a worker noticed the cobra slithering away. Aab was lucky that the workers wasted no time to carry him through the forest to a rickshaw taxi to the Basel Mission hospital.

Nobody ever survived a cobra bite; it was unheard of. The neighbors and relatives visited to say their final goodbyes. Voni and Bouji were especially kind to me when they visited the hospital. Voni returned the kanto for the second time. Aab stayed in that serious condition for thirteen days, and I borrowed against the kanto to pay for the hospital bills, to offer a novena, and to feed fifty people at St. Anthony’s Friary in exchange for his recovery.

Two months later, seven months into my pregnancy, my mother—along with my relatives, nieces, nephews—came with bananas, bags of rice, mangoes, trays of fruit, flowers, and a new saree to take me home for my confinement. Voni became like a mango again, and helped me drape my wedding sado, strung my hair with jasmine and aboli, and welcomed Mai.

We left in a slow procession through the forest, taking several breaks as I needed.

My arms and feet were swollen, my face was puffed, and I couldn’t wait until I was in Mai’s house.

The tiring journey was worth it. I slept for the next two days. My sisters massaged my feet as I lay down with my head on one sister’s lap and my feet resting on another’s. Their fingers kneaded into my scalp and pressed my temples, nose, chin, cheeks, my sore calves, feet and toes, as I drifted into deep sleep.

In the evenings, after teatime, before the twilight hour when people returned to their homes, we sat on the steps that led into the portico of the house; every woman sat behind the other like a pyramid. I sat on the bottommost step, leaned back in between my sister’s thighs, resting the back of my head onto her chest, while my sister detangled my long hair, then combed the length, collected the loose hair into clusters, massaging warm coconut oil onto my scalp. Voni and I had done this for each other when we lived in the same house.

My mother and sisters scolded me for borrowing against the kanto. She insisted that Aab should get it back at once from the money lender. So, once I had the baby, I sent word to Aab that I needed a new saree and the kanto if he wanted me to return home with our newborn. I wanted to wear it for our baby’s baptism. My hair was a healthy glossy black, and I wanted to roll my long hair into a neat bun, to place the shiny Kanto there to show off my motherhood, my baby and my unbarrenness.

Aab sent word that he could find another bride for less, so I cursed my fate, packed my bags with the gifts my mother gave me and went back home.

Voni and I continued to live in different houses on the same property and helped each other like sisters do. We helped relatives and neighbors with chores while they were convalescing and were always grateful if we received something in return, in cash or in- kind. I finally, five years after the birth of my first child, saved enough to get my kanto back.

Aab had found the stash behind the image of the Virgin Mary, but I continued to keep a little money there to keep him off the rest of my savings. The rest I kept moving around, a trick I learned from Voni.

And now I have arrived at Voni’s birthday party, on Bulla’s arm.

Inside the compound, in the yard, Bulla and I admire the rows of red plastic chairs on either side of the carpeted aisle. The food counter on the right has sannans, chicken curry, tendli moi (gherkins cooked with tender cashews and coconut) and some fancy new dishes I don’t recognize. The live band on the left is playing Roza muja, my darling Roza… Children are running around asking their mothers when cake will be served. The server holds the tray of sliced plum cake and grape juice and waits for the MC to invite someone to raise a toast as a signal the food can be served.

I look around for Voni. Her son tells me she is waiting in the middle room for me and holds my hand taking me to her. She is seated below the altar wearing a pink and mustard dual-shaded saree. Her hair is short like mine and has a small string of jasmine. Today, she is a mango. I wish her a Happy Birthday and invoke God’s blessings on her. Her eyesight has faded, but her toothless warbling laughter fills the room as she pulls me close to her, she touches my hair, feels the kanto, and the jasmine laden hair.

Our children have planned this surprise birthday party for both of us, she tells me. She gives me a shiny purse, ‘for you,’ her eyes say, ‘open and see.’ She watches me intently open and count the money, a crisp note of five hundred and a single note of one rupee for good luck. Then I give her my gift wrapped in pink paper – a gold bangle. We hug and she mumbles to Bulla that every woman must have a piece of jewelry and some money in her purse for a rainy day.