Yā vahati salil'odgāram abhra-vṛndam iva kāminy alakam

3 years ago

BrhannadaArmour

@BrhannadaArmour

Yā vahati salil'odgāram abhra-vṛndam iva kāminy alakam

(The passionate woman who wears her hair like a rain-shedding mass of clouds)

"Abhya, how long are you going to stand in the rain like that?" Latika Ekanath Dhumal demanded, stepping onto the terrace where her husband was already soaked in Śrāvaṇa's bounty. His workout weights hadn't been disturbed since this morning, she noticed.

"Until you take me in." Abhimanyu Uttamrav Jahagirdar had never outgrown his habit of sparring with the robust girl next door, although an adult response to the sight of her filling out her red raincoat had displaced his teenage rebellion against his mother's wish to make Lati her daughter-in-law.

"I have no urge to bring you in against your will!"

"The cobra spreads her hood!" Abhya waved his curved hand to mock her.

Lati, an adept multi-tasker, smiled indifferently while secretly disappointed that Abhya, under his now-transparent pale pink button-down, had worn a black undershirt.

"Would you have taken him in, if you had married him instead?" Abhya teased, spreading his arms and tossing his wet hair as the warm rain played over him.

"Whom, Sajjan Sir?" Lati guessed that Abhya was referring to the man whose family had rejected her at the wedding. She hadn't known about the dowry until Abhya, holding the charred remains of Bāpū's life savings, had pleaded with the Kokates that he would repay. Of course, she had threatened to call the police ...

"No, the scarecrow!" Abhya burst out laughing. "When I told you, 'We'll make each other miserable; don't force me to marry you,' you said, 'I'm ready to marry a scarecrow, never mind you, to end Bāpū's ordeal, but I won't force you' - remember?"

Lati remembered very well. The best decision of her life had been to let that muhūrta pass without marrying anyone, not even Abhya. Māmī had pleaded with her son to step up, and Appā had raised his hand to slap Abhya if he wouldn't, but Lati had declared, "I am ready to be faithful like Sāvitrī, but even Sāvitrī would have refused Satyavān if he had been unwilling."

manasā niścayaṃ kṛtvā tato vācā'bhidhīyate.

kriyate karmaṇā paścāt. pramāṇaṃ me manas tataḥ.

(Mahābhārata: Āraṇyakaparvan 278.27)

When the mind is determined, then speech should promise.

Action should follow last. Therefore, the mind is my guide.

"There was no question of marrying anyone after you," Lati told Abhya honestly. "In spite of hearing 'ḍhabbī' and 'ḍholī' all my life, even after thirty-four rejections, even after Sajjan Sir left me at the wedding, I hadn't given up hope that someone would want me, until you didn't even accept me as penance when you were truly sorry about losing Bāpū's money. You taught me that Bāpū would never find a man willing to give me his name. I decided that I would have to make my own name and provide for Bāpū and Āī and Ājī."

"You achieved everything on your own," Abhya objected. "It was your idea to study for the IAS exams, and you were recruited to be Collector for the District of Makhmalabad. You were always too good for that dead-end job at Ābā's bank, and now you're in a position to oppose him whenever he abuses his power as MLA."

"You made it possible for me to have ideas like that, Abhya." Lati pointed to the shivering green woods sloping up to the temple on the hill. "Look at all of those huge trees. We see the earth supporting them, but what else do they need to grow? The tiny fraction of air that is carbon dioxide ... plenty of rainwater to supply electrons ... and the power of sunlight. That's what you gave me, Abhya. A little challenge, a lot of inspiration, and immeasurable energy. Without you, I was just heavy; I couldn't support anyone. I had given up on fitness because I couldn't lose weight. When you motivated me and trained me, I became strong."

"You know what Āī says rain is, Lati?" Abhya wrapped his arms around his wife, enjoying the thought that she was safely dry inside the raincoat, with only her upturned face glistening with fresh sweet water. "It's Datta Mahārāja's way of providing water and grass for his cow. Datta Mahārāja is an avatāra of Viṣṇu, and so the sky is his domain. And the cow is an avatāra of Bhūmi Devī, Viṣṇu's wife, the earth. So, rain is Viṣṇu showing his wife how much he loves her."

"Māmī really said that, or is it your own idea?" Lati knew that her mother-in-law was a romantic, and deeply religious, but Abhya was a prankster too.

"No, it's not my idea. The way I think about rain changed when I took an environmental microbiology class for my civil engineering degree. Rain is the earth sharing life with the sky, Lati. Most of the water droplets in clouds are tiny and sterile, and their surface tension is so strong that they would never come together on their own to make a raindrop. It's the bacteria and fungi from earth, living inside one in a million droplets of liquid water in the clouds, that bring droplets together by distorting their surfaces. Without these microorganisms, there would only be white clouds high in the sky, which trap heat in the atmosphere, and most of the water that evaporates from earth would stay in the sky as water vapour, a greenhouse gas to make human life on earth impossible."

"Really, Abhya? How do bacteria and fungi from down here get up there in the first place?"

"They're microscopic cells that grow on the surfaces of plants. They coat themselves with biosurfactant molecules, which causes water vapour to condense around them as liquid water. This allows the cells to float on air currents as a bioaerosol and reach the clouds. When it's time to come down again, some of the cells may express an ice-nucleating protein to freeze a part of the raindrop and cause it to fall out of the cloud. This rain is as alive as you and I are, Lati!"

Lati giggled, happy in his embrace. "Abhya, now I'm going to dream of microorganisms in raindrops going for morning walks together like Bāpū and Appā ..."

"Or doing family visits every few months, like Suri right now ... or suddenly after eighteen years, like Tulasa Ātyā ... or maybe never, like Vahinī." Abhya's mind was on the three ladies who were meddling in their life at the moment.

Hema Vahinī had the notion that Ashu Dādā couldn't divorce her if she never visited her parents, but she loathed housework and complained every day that Lati's job excused her from it. Indumati Jahagirdar's usual response was, "Who's older? I am. And who's the mother-in-law? I am. Don't worry about Lati. I'll do the work in my house."

Āī could say this to Hema Vahinī, but not to Tulasa Ātyā, Appā's number-two older sister, who was visiting for the first time since Tamya - as she insisted on calling Uttamrav, whom everyone else called Appā - had raised his voice to tell her not to spank Lati for borrowing Abhya's coloured pencils. Tulasa Ātyā frowned upon her brother, a prosperous farmer and father of two sons, treating the daughters of Ekanath Dhumal, a mere postman, like his own children. She disapproved especially of Indu's interest in heavyset Lati as a match for handsome and athletic Abhya. Appā had felt deeply hurt when Tulasa Ātyā had stopped speaking to him, but he had not wanted her to visit and insult his next-door best friend's family either. Only after Abhya had declared to his parents that he wanted to marry Lati after all, Appā had asked Akkā, his eldest sister, to reconcile him with Tulasa. Tulasa Ātyā had attended the wedding, and since the month of Śrāvaṇa was just beginning, she would be here until the full moon for rakṣā-bandhana.

Tonight would be Lati's first Maṅgaḷā-Gaura, and Abhya didn't want Tulasa Ātyā to spoil it with an insensitive remark. Especially not while Surekha, Lati's big sister, would be there to watch for signs that Abhya had married Lati for selfish reasons. Suri had asked Abhya outright, if he wanted Lati, why had he refused to marry her in Sajjan’s place? After refusing, Abhya had taken a mortgage loan to pay back Bāpū, and Abhya had changed his mind about the money, using it instead to buy land for his sports academy, the purpose for which he had borrowed Bāpū's money in the first place. Bāpū, Jayu Māmī, and Ājī all wanted Abhya to succeed, and none of them would ever ask the boy next door for a repayment date. However, Abhya had complicated the arrangement two months later by asking to marry Lati. Now his creditor for Rs. 20 lakh was his father-in-law ... it looked very much like a dowry, and Abhya couldn't blame Suri for scrutinizing his regard for her Gabaḍullī, her chubby baby sister!

"Abhya, you were enjoying the rain a moment ago. Now you're worried." Lati pulled away from his face and held him at arm's length. "Are you thinking of Appā's and Māmī's new will?"

Suri knew about that too, of course! Hema Vahinī had exulted all over the village that she was safe from divorce now. Uttamrav and Indumati Jahagirdar had meant well, bequeathing their property jointly to Ashutosh, Hema, Abhimanyu, and Latika. However, Ashu Dādā was the only one toiling on the farmland, and the prospect of losing a quarter of it, whenever his parents ascended and he could finally escape his marriage, was stressful for a recovering alcoholic. The will’s purpose was to provide for Hema Vahinī, but had it given Suri the impression that Abhya had married Lati for his inheritance?

"Lati, no matter what anyone says, you know that I love you, right?"

"I know, Abhya. When you called me Sundarā at my modelling shoot, I could tell that you meant it."

"You figured it out first. I had to see Mohan Sir training you before my jealousy made me aware that I was in love. Anyway, I want you more than I want Appā's fertile land, his kāḷī āī. More than I want the detailed proposal and budget that you wrote for the sports academy, or your help with the mortgage payments when Daulat was holding back my paycheck, I just want you, Lati."

"And I want to share the hard times with you, Abhya." Lati loosened her raincoat and threw back the hood, letting the rain into her hair. She removed the raincoat and let her clothes soak in the downpour. "I'm going to change into a naūvārī for the Maṅgaḷā-Gaura anyway," she shrugged.

"Now we look like a well-matched couple," Abhya declared. "Right now, you look like the Lati who flirts with me in my daydreams. I told you about her, remember? Otherwise, everyone says, Lati plans everything perfectly, so how did she get stuck with impulsive Abhya?"

"I'm proud of you, just the way you are, Abhya. You're already training athletes on the academy land. When the buildings are built, you'll have more income, and we'll return Bāpū's savings with interest. Tāī will realize that we're not teenagers anymore when she sees us bickering like grown-ups, like her and Dājī. Even if Ashu Dādā and Vahinī separate, we'll support both of them."

"And Tulasa Ātyā? What are we going to do about her?"

"We don't need to do anything. The shuttle train between Appā and her is back on track. If it gets off course, Akkā Ātyā will handle it."

"Hm." Abhya caught Lati's hand and gave her a twirl.

"I mean it, Abhya. We've already won the battle and it's time to walk away. There are good times ahead. When I stand here, looking out over the village, I think of all the buildings you've constructed in Makhmalabad, and how many more we're going to build together. The rain is falling on all of them, looking for a place to grow and thrive. I know that each of your buildings is special to you. And you love me more than all of them. So, let the rain wash over me too."