Radha herself was now ready for marriage. Opposite the house where all these women, Radha and her cousins, were living, was a huge mansion with tall iron gates on either side of the high walls. The young women were in a state of suspended living. They had nothing else to look forward to but marriage. They were all waiting for the elders to bring proposals from well-known families, eligible suitors with unsmirched lineage who wanted family name, caste and virginity to be assured. The young women would gaze at the two storeyed mansion with the ornate wrought-iron gates locked against all intruders and indulge in fanciful couplings with the two eligible young sons of the family, sons who would ride the white horses in the wedding procession wearing the white and gold silk of their caste and lineage, their cockatoo-crested turbans fanning out erect and crisp; senses overcome by the heady fragrance of attar of roses sprinkled from silver flagons and jasmine garlands streaming on the manaverai and swinging massed and heavy on the braided oil-sleeked hair of the bride … the vermilion silk in its heavy folds, smooth yet stiff and unyielding until it is draped around the woman’s body, imprisoning her still further in its swathes and wrappings; feet flashing with anklets and toe-rings of silver, hands beringed, throat, wrists, ears, nostril laden with family heirlooms, henna patterning the palms and soles of feet with an orange-red tracery of intricate designs. The ordinary flesh disguised by the elaborate trappings of marriage.

And so they waited, waited and waited, each of them, for a husband like Shiva.

Sivam’s story

Sivam, the bank clerk, sat in the small dark backroom in the house of his rich relatives, poring over the letters given to him by the go-between. Love letters. Letters from a young woman who professed her admiration of him. He, a humble clerical servant. He read avidly, the blue note paper still bearing a faint hint of fragrance from the flowers in her hair. ‘What does she promise?’ Love. Fidelity.

‘I am prepared to marry you. I see you pass by the house everyday. I know what your feelings are towards me. I reciprocate them too. I know that my parents, my relatives will be dead against our plans, yet I am prepared to face all opposition. Nothing should deter us ….’

Recklessness of phrase. Could all this be true?

‘I can then hope.’ Sivam folded the letter, put it carefully away in a drawer of the cupboard which held his office clothes and his veshtis that he wore to the temple on Fridays.