Excerpt: The Silent Raga

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If I could return to that time, I would choose the mornings.

Especially the mornings after my mother's death, when my days began very early. In fact, to the short, piercing whistle of the Rockfort Express at four. Sometimes I would already be up, drawing water from the well at the back of the house, and I would hear it call. My body would go still for a few seconds. The bucket would shake and splatter as I hesitated in midreach for the handle. It would slip halfway into the well again, completely drenching my dhavani and blouse.

At that time of morning, when the crows and mynahs and parrots were still nursing their voices and not a single light shone in any of the neighbourhood houses, in that deep starlit darkness, the solitary cry of the train was a despairing call. A strange music.

I would feel the cool morning air against my wet skin, and then a quick, feathery warmth would spread through me, as though someone had rubbed eucalyptus oil all over my skin.

I wonder now if Amma thought of it in those terms. Did she even hear the train as it rumbled by only five miles away?

With the bucket of water in one hand I would grab the broom and the kolapodi tin with the other and walk around to the front of the house. I would sweep up the dried leaves and dust from the path leading to the front door, scoop it neatly into the pan and empty it into the big, rusty metal bin beside the gate. Then I would moisten the ground with fresh, cold water sprinkled from my cupped palm and level it smooth.

The kolam I designed would depend on how I felt that particular day. On some mornings it was an elaborate welcome to dawn, ambitious and full of snaking grandeur, and my hands would weave a tapestry of blooming flowers and intertwined stars. I would grab fists full of kolapodi – one, two, three, even four sometimes – and pour my heart into my masterpiece, my sublime welcome mat to the sun. And on other days it was a hurried note of dots and curves – a snappy, perfunctory kiss of cordiality – achieved with just half the amount of powder.

I have not dipped my hands in kolapodi for many years. I can't say I miss the grainy feel of powdered rice and white rock on my fingers.

I am no longer a prisoner of pattern.

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