Image: © Charles Eastwood
She hadn’t looked for it in a long time but there it is, just as she knew it would be. Underneath her winter coat that was too tattered now to keep her warm, atop her worn out boots, which likewise had lost their ability to keep her feet warm, was the box, with its contents that had followed coat and boots and had lost the spark to warm her spirit. The pattern on the cover of the box is of flower buds with a few leaves interspersed into the design. Perhaps it was meant to signify new beginnings, Vasuki thinks, as she opens the box. The tissue paper inside is slightly discoloured with age. She parts it carefully; she doesn’t want to tear it. The koorai sari within gleams red. It is the red of blood. The red of the pillar box that stood on the main road near the bus stop, a ten-minute bicycle ride on the dry dirt path that connected her home to the main road, in Jaffna in the north of Sri Lanka. It is the red of the telephone booth she sees near the Westminster underground station in her home in London. In the early days of her marriage when she was new to England, Arul would urge her to stand next to such telephone booths so he could take her picture. ‘See,’ he would tell her, ‘in spite of the mobile phone, they still preserve the telephone box.’ He said “they” not “we” even though he had been living in England for over ten years by then. It hadn’t struck her as strange at the time, but she thinks of it as singularly odd now. She fingers the sari delicately. Its silkiness makes her fingers slide down it. She takes it from the box and spreads it out. The colour and the richness still have the power to make her catch her breath. She feels its weight on her arms. What promise this koorai sari once held!
The swirl of orange sari loosely winding around her legs and pooling at her feet hides the patchy red floor polish of their home in Sri Lanka. ‘Stand up straight so I can drape it properly.’ Jerusha’s mother’s voice is muffled as she holds several safety pins pressed between her lips, pins that would be used to secure Jerusha’s sari in place. Jerusha will change into the customary red koorai sari that will be presented by her new husband later in the ceremony, but for now she will wear the orange sari that her mother had selected for her. Her mother had insisted on draping the sari herself, even though many of the other tasks surrounding the wedding ceremony have been delegated to strangers. Jerusha’s wavy waist-length hair has been braided into a single thick plait wound tightly, and she hopes securely, into a bun at the nape of her neck. Strands of jasmine flowers have been pinned to the braided bun of hair. The hair and makeup have been done for her by the owner of Niro’s Beauty Centre. Everyone calls her Niro, no one knows if it’s really her name. Niro had applied a thick pancake makeup on Jerusha and painted her lips the shade of a sunset to match the sari. Black kohl line her upper and lower eyelashes. Jerusha blinks several times at her reflection in the mirror. Her face is a paler version of her dusky skin tone. The lipstick had been applied slightly outside the contours of her lips to make them appear fuller than they are. The black kohl ‘brings out’ her eyes Niro had explained. Jerusha hopes the guests would recognise her despite the makeup. Her mother gives the finishing touches to the sari drape and they both look at her reflection in the mirror. It is a full-length mirror fixed to the old almirah that had belonged to her grandmother. It has a crack running diagonally through its length. Above the crack, Jerusha sees her makeup lightened face framed by her black rimmed eyes looking back at her solemnly and anxiously. Below the crack, she can see that her sari has been gathered into delicate pleats at the waist and that it hugs her slender hips. It ends at her feet, neither too long nor too short. Her mother had draped it perfectly.
‘Ammmaaa,’ Vasuki’s son, Yoganathan, yells out as soon as he sees her. He is in the playground at his school in North London, where he’s called Yoga. It’s easier that way. He runs towards her, his speed increasing as he draws closer, and then hurls his seven-year-old self onto her. He is effusive in his warmth and demonstrativeness. Vasuki marvels at the contrast he offers his twelve-year-old sister, Madhavie. As much as Yoga is open and affable, Madhavie is all cool aloofness. Vasuki will pick her up from her school later, and she will rigidly answer her in monosyllables until Vasuki gives up the effort to draw her into conversation.
‘Amma, guess what happened today,’ gasps Yoga. ‘I’m going to be in a winter play.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘It’s the story of Jesus and the play has Joseph and the Wise Men and the shepherds. I wanted to be Joseph, but I am going to be a wise man, a very wise man.’
‘Yes, you are. Very wise and very sweet.’ Vasuki ruffles his hair.
She can well imagine that he would want to play Joseph so he could be a central character in the play, but she is glad he is not. She is not sure Arul would approve. Their marriage, predictably enough, had started out with her being reticent and retreating, and Arul, confident and progressive. But as the years passed and she grew in confidence and acclimatised herself to the ways of England, Arul had regressed into the past of his childhood, appearing preoccupied with the life he had had in Jaffna and those he had known in his adolescence. It seemed to Vasuki that his body and mind had convened and struck a deal for the body to be present in England, and for the mind to escape into the homeland he had left long before she had. Before coming to England, she herself had lived all her life in Jaffna. When she first left Jaffna to come to Colombo, the capital city, the metropolitan glamour of Colombo had made her stop and stare at all the landmarks she passed. She had travelled to London with her newly acquired husband. She couldn’t imagine making the journey by air on her own. ‘Better I take you with me straight away,’ Arul had said, ‘otherwise who knows where you might end up. Maybe in Timbuktu.’ He had laughed comfortably at his joke while Vasuki tried to smile politely and not knit her brows in confusion. She was disoriented and distraught when they had landed at the Heathrow airport. The weariness of the journey, the unfamiliarity of the surroundings and the newness of the husband who sat beside her, all taking a toll on her nerves. The airport had felt like a city in itself. Her eyes tried to take in the people of varying hues striding purposefully in the airport. Her heart ached with longing for the known, familiar faces she had left behind, faces on bodies that walked to a slower drum beat.
Jerusha sits on the mandap with her soon to be joined-in-marriage husband, Krishnan. She has changed into the koorai sari he had given her. It is as red as the blood flowing in the vein in her temple that she can now feel throbbing in a surge of expectancy and nerves. She is seated so close to Krishnan that she can feel the heat of his body through the folds of her sari. Through the six yards of the sari wrapped around her she feels a connection to the man seated beside her. She doesn’t dare look at him; she focuses instead on the platter containing her thali, the chain with the medallion pendant that would be placed around her neck by Krishnan, symbolising her union with him. For now, the thali is draped around a coconut that’s nestled in a bed of green betel leaves. It offers an interesting contrast of colours, the green of the leaves contrasting with the sand-coloured coconut and the dazzling gold of the necklace. Jerusha can almost feel the weight of the gold necklace, even though it has not yet been placed around her neck. The priest officiating the ceremony hands the platter to Krishnan’s elder sister, and Jerusha watches as she takes it around to the guests for blessings that would be passed to her and Krishnan. She can feel him watching the platter being taken around as well. She wonders at her own new found ability to feel him without touching, to see him without looking. She imagines him experiencing the same pinpricks of excitement as her, the same tingling sensation that passes over her body. The platter has been brought around to the priest again. She brings her palms together in prayer as Krishnan rises to tie the thali around her neck. She feels his fingers graze the nape of her neck and a shiver of excitement passes through her whole being. Above the sound of the drums and through a haze of flower petals being thrown at them, she feels him looking at her, directly this time, this man who is now her husband.
‘Your mum is here.’ A girl in Madhavie’s class prods her in the arm. Madhavie looks around to see Vasuki walking up hurriedly. Mum, she wants to call out to her as she has heard the others call out to their mothers, loudly and airily, with the confidence borne of using a familiar term of a single vocabulary. The word gets stuck in Madhavie’s throat, reluctant to come out in competition with the more accepted term existing in her mother tongue. Amma, she says sullenly, as she walks up to Vasuki. It weighs heavily of her frustration. Vasuki smiles at her daughter as she gets nearer. So similar to her in appearance, yet the struggle to understand her! Madhavie was born a year after Vasuki’s marriage and arrival in the UK. It had been a difficult pregnancy. Vasuki had felt tired, heavy and sick for most of it and had wished she had her mother to support her; to tell her stories of her own pregnancy and to reassure her that it would all turn out well. Arul had tried to help her in the clumsy manner of a man who was out of his depth and didn’t know how best to respond. He was not unkind, but he had appeared puzzled and frustrated at her difficulty in coping with her pregnancy and the early days with the new born baby as though she had missed a cue of womanhood that should have come naturally. Still, when Madhavie was born, Vasuki had continued to pin her hopes on Arul and the life he could give her. She recalls the first time she and Arul had gone to a supermarket, so he could show her how grocery shopping was done in England.
‘As you get used to it here and as your English improves, you can do the shopping yourself,’ he had said. ‘But, first, I will show you how it is done.’
Vasuki’s eyes darted from aisle to aisle taking in the boxes, the jars, the bottles and the tins on the shelves. In her last few years in Jaffna, supermarkets had begun to open there too. Of course, they didn’t have as many aisles as this, nor the amount of goods that were in here. She felt she could stay in this supermarket all day, looking at each item, but Arul had hurried her along.
‘You push the trolley,’ he said. ‘I know where the things are and I can pick them up quickly.’
They went down aisle after aisle. Arul had efficiently taken what he needed. He showed her that some brands were cheaper than others.
‘Take those,’ he said, ‘they are the same thing. No need to waste money.’
He showed her how some goods were cheaper when they were nearer the expiry date.
‘Choose those,’ he said, ‘unless we can’t finish it by the expiry date. Even then, most things are still good, even if they have expired a little.’
He had taken the trolley from her hands.
‘I can push it and take the things also,’ he had told her. ‘It’s faster that way. You follow me and see how I do it.’
He pushed the trolley ahead; it was not heavy, they had bought little. She followed him, anxious not to lose sight of him. They passed an aisle filled with biscuits and chocolates. At her eye level, she had seen a box of chocolate-covered biscuits. Her hands reached out for the box. The box had images of the biscuits inside. They were in different shapes. Some were swirls, one half covered in chocolate and the other half white. Some were round, some triangular, chocolate biscuits with nuts sprinkled on top. Arul had retraced his steps to where she stood. He had looked at the box in her hands.
‘Twenty pounds? Are you crazy? I can’t throw away money like that. Do you know how hard I have to work? And bringing you here was expensive, the visa process, the plane ticket. And more costs now that there are two of us. Most couples here, both work. But without any work experience and little English, a long time before you can start working. So can’t be burning up money like this on things we don’t need. You don’t want these biscuits anyway, you are not used to things like that.’
But your salary seems good, she wanted to say. I just wanted to taste a little of England. But she hadn’t said it. Instead, she had replaced the box on the shelf and followed Arul and the trolley. Perhaps that is when the colours began to dim and her enthusiasm became muted.
Once the chain has been placed around her neck, the mood is palpably more relaxed. A small hand mirror is passed to the couple and Jerusha and Krishnan look into it. There is no diagonal crack in it unlike in her mirror at home. As such, there are no halves of an image reflected in this mirror. She looks hesitantly at her reflection. A minute movement of her eyes and she can see him reflected in it too. He is looking directly at her. She starts to smile, a shy curve of the ends of her lips at first, the smile getting wider as she feels herself becoming bolder. He is smiling broadly. She sees the dimple in his chin. It is what she had first noticed when their photographs were exchanged and when she had seen him in person a week ago. He lives in England, and their relationship had started and continued through social media. In spite of all the months of communicating online, she had still been tongue-tied when she had seen him at the airport in Colombo. Everything about him seemed larger in person. He seemed heavier than she had thought, and taller. When he spoke, he seemed louder too. Even the dimple in the chin seemed more prominent. She had presented him with some flowers as her aunt had suggested. In return, he had enveloped her in a hug and that had surprised them all, her mother, aunt, uncle and even her two young cousins. It had surprised Jerusha as well. She was surprised and pleased.
The days are cooler, and it has begun to get dark early. Arul goes to bed earlier now. Most days when Vasuki goes to bed herself, he is already asleep. Vasuki changes into her nightdress in the bathroom and slips into bed beside him, noiselessly. It’s not so much to not wake him up, it is simply easier to obliterate his presence when he is asleep. She lies rigidly next to his sleeping form. Sometimes, she turns on her side and looks at him. She harbours no ill feelings towards him. She harbours no feelings towards him at all. In the early days of her marriage, she had craved his presence in all its forms. Now his presence fails to stir her. Perhaps, she thinks, the fault is hers for having expected much of him. She had felt entitled to because she had left everyone and everything she had known in her life so she could move here to be a part of his life. In spite of her presumed naivety, she saw the disdain in his eyes when he looked at her, heard the condescension in his voice when he spoke to her, the near contempt for the girl he had rescued from his war-torn country to offer a new life in England. She didn’t know what he expected of her, perhaps it was a measure of gratitude, a degree of obedience, perhaps adoration, certainly a heaping of submission. If she could have sensed that he had some love for her, she could have looked beyond his frailties and offered him some of what he expected. Today, when she enters the bedroom, he is not asleep. He is sitting in bed, with his head bowed down. In a rare glimpse of his vulnerability, she almost feels sorry for him. The moment passes and he looks up and speaks.
‘Yoganathan is in a play.’
Perhaps it is a question but when he says it, it sounds like a statement.
‘It’s a school play. The Nativity. He is playing the role of one of the Wise Men.’
Arul makes a sound, a hiss of contempt and dismissiveness, before speaking.
‘I hope he will put as much effort into his studies as into this rubbish playacting. The whole point of being here is so he can study well and get into a good job. So many opportunities here that he must make use of.’
‘He is only six,’ Vasuki says.
Arul does not respond. He says instead, ‘Madhavie should open up more. Very backward, like a village girl.’
‘She is not backward,’ she says. ‘She is going through a difficult age.’
‘That is all this western nonsense. You know how it is in Jaffna, no? You think in Jaffna children are like this? They have no difficult age. They have a difficult childhood and even with all the struggles, are they grumpy? No, because they have other things to worry about, they don’t have the luxury to sit around and turn up their mouths and noses at things, and for everyone to excuse them by saying ‘difficult age.’’
She concedes he may have a point. She does not tell him so. In him, she sees the easy dismissal of the country he had left behind, yet the constant need to compare both countries. The straddling of two cultures and norms and the futile attempt to reconcile them. Of late, his mind appeared to dwell more and more regularly on Jaffna and he seemed to view it increasingly more positively. Perhaps he was mellowing with age, just as she was. Arul gets into bed, and Vasuki goes to the bathroom to change her clothes. Beyond talk of the children, the conversation sputters and flickers like a candle flame, before dying out.
The pot is brought out, and the water in it is opaque. That way, they will not see the ring inside it. Jerusha is looking forward to this part of the ceremony, offering as it does a respite from the solemn rituals and a promise to lighten the atmosphere. She had seen it being done at her sister’s wedding and it had appeared to her to be filled with excitement. They dip their hands in the water, tentatively at first and then plunge them deeper into the pot. The aim is to be the first to find and pull out the ring from inside the pot. With her head bent over the pot, she hears rather than sees his brothers and cousins egging him on to find the ring first. She feels some of her cousins come alongside her as well. They are cheering her on. She wishes her sister were here, but she cannot help a joyous bubble of laughter forming at her throat and bursting out. Beside her, she can feel Krishnan laugh. Inside the pot, she can feel his hand brush against hers. If only she could look at him she would know whether he did it intentionally, but she focuses on feeling around for the ring. His arm knocks against hers, and she can feel his hand brush hers again. It can’t be by accident this time. She does not take her hand away. In the water, he entwines a finger around one of hers. As he does, she feels the metal hardiness of a ring beneath her fingertips. She makes no attempt to pick up the ring. Instead, she lets him hold her hand. She is glad the water in the pot is opaque.
Sometimes, as now, Vasuki finds herself marvelling at the strides she has made in England. She wonders at her own story of being a girl from Sri Lanka with limited English, who had come to England, learned English, and got herself a job in England. It is a part time job, no doubt, and that too at a supermarket similar to the one Arul had taken her to during those early days in the country, but she could not have imagined then that she would work in such a place and be able to earn her own money. She has to admit that while Arul had not actively encouraged her, he had not stood in her way either. Maybe it was a trick of her mind but he seemed to begrudgingly respect her for it. She saved as much as she could of her earnings to send home to her mother, knowing that even a few pounds would go a long way when converted to Sri Lankan rupees and managed by a mother who would stretch it as far as the rupee could go. She’s glad her marriage to Arul and her earnings in England have eased the burden from her mother’s shoulders and given Jerusha a life with less responsibilities on her young shoulders than Vasuki had shouldered at the same age. She is happy she has that consolation. Neither her mother nor Jerusha need know that she feels as alone in her marriage as she had felt before her marriage. She had tried not to focus too much on Jerusha and her wedding, which she couldn’t attend, but as the days got closer, her thoughts turned more towards Jerusha and her wedding, and inwards towards her own marriage. Jerusha was following in her footsteps by marrying a man from England in yet another arranged marriage, and would move to England soon herself. But even as she thought that thought, she corrected herself. There was a difference there, she was sure of it. Jerusha had seemed more relaxed with her husband than she had ever felt with Arul, and her conversations about Krishnan contained traces of excitement and promise that she felt her thoughts of Arul never had. As she put her sari back in the box, she hoped she was right. She had made her peace with her marriage, but for her little sister she hoped for more.
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Uvini Atukorala is a Sri Lankan writer. Her stories are set mainly in Sri Lanka, and she enjoys crafting stories that have authentic, relatable characters. Her collection of short stories, “A Place Called Home” was shortlisted for the 2021 Gratiaen Award, which is awarded for the best work of creative writing in English by a Sri Lankan writer. With a background in law and English literature, her work explores concepts such as relationships, belonging, and history. She believes Sri Lankan fiction holds a distinctive richness and is eager to share its stories with the world.