Their rented house was near the temple, just like all the houses in Srirangam. The temple was the heart of the village, a non-throbbing essence that kept the village alive through yellow sunrises and sunsets. Every morning, the temple bells would resonate gently through the dim morning glow and hit the barriers the 21 gopuram towers surrounding the village. Early pilgrims in dhotis drifted towards the Kolidam in groups like white birds. Women smear their face with turmeric on the thinnai outside their doorsteps with their wet hair wrapped in a towel. And the children were asleep. The young chennait was asleep too.
Chitti smacked a mosquito on her arm with a Dinamalar magazine. She doesn't read any of the articles in it. It is purely for looking at pictures of young actresses and actors staring at her with a smile unintended for her. She did not buy them on her own either. The parents of the chennait got it for her from the Madras Central Railways. She liked to imagine that it smelled like Chennai, it had the Chennai essence but stained with the blood of a local Srirangam mosquito. A bright red splatter of kumkum on a married woman's forehead.
The chennait's mom was taking a late bath in the washroom at the back of the house. Chitti liked to imagine that the mother had the same body of the child but she knew that the child was not like her mother. Her mother had dimpled thighs, sagging fat and a dark halo around her round belly just like Chitti. But it had the smallest part of the child. Her dark body had faint outlines of her childhood, scars of salad days. It was faint, like an artist's drifting sketch under darker finishing lines. Perhaps the child would look just like that when she was old. Chitti secretly wished it wouldn't happen. The child must enjoy her life, enjoy the fruits she bears and share them with others. Skin on skin love that Chitti experienced in the confines of floral arrangements in her first night after marriage.
Chitti noticed a white strand of hair when she passed the mirror. She had to buy black hair dye soon. Maybe she would ask the Chennait's mom.
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lentil rice
Poetryyouth grows on branches of mango trees. pluck them early green and bury them in rice baskets to ripen them quick. love grows on branches of guava trees. pluck them early green and they are solid teeth-breakers. pluck them late white, love melts in...
