The Troublemakers of Manakkarai

Selvi looked at the brinjal poriyal she was to be fed in disgust, It looks and feels like attai, Ma. So slippery, and the texture is… Gag noises.

Will you eat or must I stamp my fingers across your cheek now?

Who eats attai? Attai poriyal is disgusting, she ran around the house, her green-white frock drenched in mid-April’s humidity.

I will smash your teeth now, if you don’t eat.

Feed it to the dog. Julie, come eat some attai, bow wow.

Shut up now, Amma began chasing her.

Having watched this charade irate for a few minutes Aaya made her way into the conversation with her trademark aggression. Like a mad elephant entering a brawl between monkeys.

Where is that useless son of mine? What kind of household does he lord over where the women can’t even lower their voices? She then turned her head left, looked down and spat.

In one swift move Aaya had infantilised and made powerless both mother and daughter. The seven-year-old wolfed down that garlicky ‘leech’ rice in no time.

I will show you how to bring this one in line, Aaya wagged her fingers.

Aaya, her father’s mother, had a lifetime of experience bringing girls in line. Like that man who wielded a stick but could control where the dozens of goats he minded went with just his tongue.

You can beat up the boys and bring them your way, but on girls, you mustn’t lay a finger, Aaya instructed her mother.

At the end of all her instructions, Aaya said to Selvi, Don’t cross the line I draw! As if she was afraid of something. As if Aaya foresaw something. As if she knew Selvi was going to cross that line someday.

One morning twelve-year-old Selvi was given a warning. That she might be mistaken for a whore for laughing with her mouth open in front of the male cousin she was promised to. That same day, Rajkumar, the man she would end up with, who wore a white T-shirt and a pair of blue bell-bottomed jeans for his fourteenth birthday was taunted by his classmates.

Why are ‘you’ wearing all this? Think you are a hero or what? Are you Ajith? Maari, who was wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Long live the Kshatriyan’ asked, once he and his friends finally caught Raj alone, away from his group of friends.

Laughter.

Come walk by our streets to look at our girls, wearing your jeans and T-shirt, and we’ll break your head! Guru hissed. And touch our girls and we’ll chop off your arms!

That group watched him, always. Waiting for him to cross the line. It was as if they wanted Rajkumar to. It was as if they could see trouble.

***

There, in Manakkarai, one evening at the Malai Parvathi Amman Temple, the pair of them, troublemaker-in-waiting and line-crosser-in-the-making met. Eyes blazing, hearts pounding. It was, as it happened to Simbu in that film, Vinnaithandi Varuvaya, love at first sight for him. They met every day after that. A nod here, a smile there. Then the coy glances. Lingering glances. Small talk. Hand holding in towns far away from home on mofussil buses...

They had it all figured. She would become an engineer, an equal to him. And he would try to equal her father’s money.

Selvi sat in the college canteen, during various boring lectures and delivered sweet nothings to Raj, on the phone. The canteen owner, Ramu, married to a cousin of hers, unbeknownst to her, had set his eyes on her. Of course. Picture a man with a moustache. Any generic man with a forgettable face. He was that to her.

Ramu learned to live by imitation. If his father found the fish curry too tangy, that day he too found it too tangy. If his father used a slur on a man on the road, he’d use the same word at the next fight that broke out in school. When he saw his father burn down the huts of couples that married out of caste, he threatened to do the same to girls who spoke to boys in school. When at the ripe age of twenty-one he was married off to his niece, seventeen, it was because his father too had married a niece. He unleashed the terror he grew up with on his wife. If she didn’t wake up before him, there was hell to pay. If she didn’t stay awake until he came home from the fields, there was most certainly going to be a whipping. He would have to give her a black eye and then as was custom in his home, take her out to town the next day and buy her two sovereigns of gold.

In the end though, he had more in common with Raj than his father. For he too had watched Simbu receive the whiplash of love in the film Vinnaithandi Varuvaya. He too wanted to fall in love and marry. The only catch was that at the time of the movie’s release Ramu was married and had a five-year-old daughter. He figured, at least his second marriage could come out of love. His father had two homes, he must too.

Then he did his homework. The girl was from his caste. Jackpot. Her father owed people money.

When he went brazenly to her house, alone, there was some hesitation. First from the mother, then the grandmother. Wasn’t the boy too young to be taking a second wife? Why would they give their parrot-like beautiful girl as his second wife? And she was yet to finish engineering. She wanted to work in the city and live there too. Her family approved, because who’s going to say no to a girl working in a software company?

Ramu hid his arsenal well until Aaya’s doubts had been made clear. He had addressed the girl’s family with respect and love. They had let their guard down. They had offered him cola and spoken to him about their debts and how the debtors were showing up at the door threatening to take them to the courts. Why hadn’t they just wallowed in self-pity for some more time? Why did they have to gloat about their girl? Now Ramu had to cross the line.

Just as their questions about his intentions grew shrill, he looked Selvi’s father in the eye and asked, Do you know your daughter is in love?

Would more huts burn today?

Do you know what jaati he’s from?

Just as the silence threatened to engulf them all in its shameful fold, Aaya rose from the floor swift as a cat.

No. No way. Not dear Selvi, Aaya assured Selvi’s father. This is all a mistake. When I draw a line, she knows to stay inside it. He has seen someone else. This is a case of mistaken identity. You wait and see, Aaya said, biting her tongue, praying to Malai Parvathi Amman for her words to come true.

Somewhere on a highway far from Manakkarai two troublemakers in love on a TVS 50 were on their way to a lawyer’s house.