Chapter One
‘Dai, Ravi! Get the bat and ball and come down! I’m setting up the stumps!’
A young boy, around twelve years old, was running into an open playground, calling out to another boy on a first-floor balcony above. It was just after 4.30 pm and the piercing heat – and worse, the humidity – of the Chennai summer afternoon was just starting to abate.
These evening hours were precious. Although the boys would have loved to play as soon as school was out, their mothers insisted that they have something cool to drink and wait an hour. Most of them had learned by now that it was useless to argue.
Ravi, leaning over the balcony railing, raised his hand in acknowledgement of Babu, the boy who had called out. Ravi was a tall, somewhat plump boy. His light brown eyes sat under heavy eyebrows and he had a button nose. His wide lips were generally seen stretched across his face in a smile, but just at present, he was gulping down a glass of milk, two white rivulets streaming down from the corners of his lips. Finally, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and ran indoors to make his way down to the playground.
Babu’s stumps were a piece of cardboard wedged in between a broken brick on one side and a large rock on the other. He was a lanky boy, having just grown three or four inches in the last few months. His eyes were jet black and his long lashes brushed against his glasses, which were usually cloudy with perspiration. He was squatting in front of the stumps, making sure the flimsy cardboard was secure, his dark brown skin shining in the afternoon sun. Once this was done, he stood up and carefully measured fifteen paces, counting them under his breath, to mark out the other end of the crease.
He took his job seriously. Babu was the captain of the Shanthi Colony cricket team.
Shanthi Colony was a group of ten blocks of flats, each of which housed six units. The blocks themselves were fairly simple concrete buildings, constructed in the seventies. They had originally been painted light yellow on the outside, a colour that the harsh sun had turned off-white over the years. The flats were surrounded by a large boundary wall with two gates, each manned by a security guard. These guards were not exactly of the ex-policeman variety – in fact, both of them used to work in shops – but they provided enough peace of mind to the mothers in the colony that their children wouldn’t run outside without their knowing about it.
The playground was just inside the colony gates. One end of it contained a set of swings, a jungle gym and a long-broken seesaw. The rest was open space. Boys would play cricket in the evenings and girls would play badminton or catch-catch. The playground was surrounded by a short wrought-iron fence and a flowerbed, which was being watered by a short, slightly plump old lady. She wore a burnt orange cotton sari, and her greying hair was in a bun at the nape of her neck. Everything about her was neat – from her carefully parted hair, to her perfectly round pottu (a round red dot drawn in the middle of the forehead as an adornment). Her smile was friendly and welcoming.
As the water hit the ground, the sweet smell of the wet earth began to fill the air. The old lady sighed happily. She loved this part of her day.
‘Good evening, Kummi Paati,’ Babu said.
Kummi – or Komalam, to use her full name – had lived in the colony for nearly forty years. She had come there as a young married woman with two children. Two children who, like Babu, used to play in this very playground every evening while she was in the apartment, cooking and cleaning and doing all the things that needed doing in running a household. Somehow the years had passed her by, and now she was nearly sixty-five. Her daughter Shakuntala and her son Vivek were grown and lived overseas, and she had become the honorary Paati (or grandmother) to all of the young children who lived in the colony now. Like Babu.
She smiled back at the boy and replied to his question.
‘Good evening, Babu! Getting ready for the big match, yes?’
Babu nodded. ‘We have a lot of catching up to do. The boys from New Look Manere have been practising for months!’
New Look Manere was a high-rise apartment block, two streets away. It had only been built a few years previously and had much better facilities than Shanthi Colony – including, to the envy of the colony children, a swimming pool. But the New Look boys and girls were not inclined to share.
‘We are already behind. But what to do?’
Babu looked around and, as he did, his glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose, propelled by sweat and habit. He wrinkled his nose, using the action to push his glasses back into place.
‘See? My team still haven’t come for practice. Not even my vice-captain is here!’
As he spoke, though, a few boys started to trickle in. Kummi Paati gestured over his shoulder, her lips turning up at the corners.
‘Look behind you,’ she said.
Without another word, Babu turned and ran towards his friends. Kummi Paati continued to water the garden, smelling the earth and the delicate scent from the many varieties of jasmine plants. As she lifted her gaze from the flowerbed, enjoying the riot of colours from the hibiscus, the bougainvillea and the crossandra, she took in the scene of the children playing together. Every evening, she watched these children play while she watered the garden. It was almost always the best part of her day.
As she stood there, hose in hand, three more people walked into the playground. As soon as she saw them, Kummi Paati smiled. Shakuntala, her daughter, was taking her twin ten-year-old nieces, Nina and Alisha, to meet a group of girls playing badminton at the far end of the playground. They had arrived a few nights ago from Sydney, Australia. The girls were tall for their age, and had warm russet-brown skin, like their father. They both had straight black hair. Nina’s was plaited in two and Alisha’s was in a high ponytail – both girls attempting to keep the hair off their necks in the heat. They were dressed to play with other girls, in shorts and t-shirts that had seen better days. Vivek, their father, had been planning to make the trip with his daughters, but a last-minute work crisis had nearly made him cancel the trip altogether. But then his sister Shakuntala had decided she ‘needed a break from Sydney’ – whatever that meant – and so the trio had made the journey together.
Having left the girls with their new friends, Shakuntala – or Shaku, as she was usually called – walked over to Kummi Paati. She was tall, like her father, and had long, black, curly hair, currently pulled up in a high bun. Her face, like her mother’s, was pleasant and open. Both of them had the same rounded nose, the same thick lips. But where Kummi Paati had small eyes, covered by large, caterpillar-like eyebrows, Shakuntala – who had edited her eyebrows down from what nature had bestowed upon her – had large eyes that, just at present, were ringed with circles.
‘I might go upstairs, Amma,’ she said, using the Tamil word for mother. ‘I’m still tired.’
‘Jetlag?’ Kummi Paati asked.
Shakuntala nodded.
‘Shall I come up and make you some coffee?’ Kummi Paati asked.
‘No, no. I think I’m going to lie down for a bit.’
‘Okay. You go, ma, I’ll watch the girls,’ Kummi Paati said.
She glanced back at the girls, and then over to the boys. Ravi, the delayed vice-captain, had arrived and was shouting out as he ran towards the group. She continued her watering but noticed soon enough that the boys were not playing cricket. They seemed to be discussing something instead. A lot of the boys were pointing at Ravi, and Babu appeared to have taken up a placatory stance between him and most of the other boys.
The feeling of water on her legs startled her. She looked down to find that her sari was wet, drenched by her slackening hand as she watched the boys become agitated. Voices were raised, but she could not make out what was happening. She hitched her sari up a bit, tucking it in at her waist, and turned back to the plants.
She would find out soon enough, she thought.
Twenty minutes later, Kummi Paati rounded the corner and turned off the tap. The girls were still playing badminton, but most of the boys had left the playground. Ravi and Babu were still there, and she heard them speaking.
‘It’s okay, da. We can get another one by tomorrow. I’ll ask my father and you also ask, okay?’
Ravi responded in a slightly wobbly voice. ‘Okay, da.’
‘Come,’ Babu said, ‘let’s go home and play carrom.’
Kummi Paati could feel Ravi looking at her before she saw him. She turned towards him and met his glance with a smile. She had known Ravi since he was born, as she did so many of the young children in Shanthi Colony. She had been at the ceremony to bless his pregnant mother before his birth, she had been at the post-birth ceremony to bless him with a long life, and she had been at every birthday event he’d had after that. These children in the colony, while not related to her, were close and known.
‘You go, da,’ Ravi said. ‘I’ll come in a while.’
Kummi Paati gathered the hose the way she did every evening, and hung it on the rusty iron hook that had been used for that purpose for decades. She turned the tap on once again to wash her hands and her feet and when she turned around, Ravi was waiting.
He sat on top of the short wrought-iron fence that surrounded the playground. His shoulders were hunched over and he looked down, trying to hide his dirt-streaked face. Kummi Paati went and sat next to him. His little body heaved once, then he hiccoughed. He sniffled and turned away. Kummi Paati put her arm around him. After a few minutes, he brushed his arm over his face and turned back towards her.
‘Kummi Paati, the boys are all blaming me.’
‘What are they blaming you for?’
‘The cricket balls. They keep getting lost.’
Kummi Paati smiled.
‘Do they? And how does that happen?’
‘I keep them in a box in our scooter garage. And they keep going missing from there!’
‘How many have been lost so far?’
Ravi appeared to think for a moment.
‘At least three or four. And if I ask my Appa to get a ball again,’ his voice began to wobble as he contemplated confessing to his father, ‘he will scold me badly.’
‘Hmm. I see. Well how about this. Go tomorrow and buy a ball from Mythili Mart. And keep it with you, in your room.’
She reached into her blouse, extracted a twenty rupee note and handed it to the boy.
Ravi’s face lit up.
‘Thank you, Kummi Paati!’
He jumped up, ready to run to his friend’s house. But after a few steps, he turned around and looked at Kummi Paati again.
‘But Kummi Paati, what about all the other balls?’
‘I am glad you have not forgotten about them. After all, your father paid money for them, didn’t he? So we will have to see about them too. But you don’t worry, kanna,’ she said, the Tamil endearment slipping out naturally. ‘Leave it with me.’
#
The next day, Kummi Paati woke at 6 am, as she did every morning. She started the day by cleaning the corridor outside the entrance of her flat and drawing a kolam on the floor, a pattern made with rice flour that could be simple or highly complex, depending on Kummi Paati’s mood. Then she went into the kitchen and boiled the milk. A container was left near the front door every morning by Anbu, the man in the back lane who kept cows. It was rare, these days, to get fresh cow’s milk and when Anbu had moved into the neighbourhood with his five cows, Paati was happy. Even though his milk was more expensive than the packet milk delivered by the newspaper boy, she enjoyed it a lot more.
After she had boiled the milk, she made her morning coffee. She and her husband still ate the traditional way, and so did the grandchildren when they visited. None of these cereal breakfasts for her. They had coffee in the morning, and a full meal at 10 am. And so, once she had finished her early morning coffee, she began to cook. She started with the rasam, a thin lentil and tomato soup that was eaten with rice. Then she made beans kootu, a thicker stew made of green beans and lentils. Next up was the sambhar, a different type of lentil broth. And she was just finishing the potato curry when she noticed the time. It was just after 8 am. Time for her second coffee, and for her husband’s first one. She measured two tumblers of milk into a stainless-steel vessel and placed it on the stove.
Her husband, Somasekar, was known in the colony as Somu Thatha. Somu was a nickname for Somasekar, while Thatha was the Tamil word for grandfather. He was from the same small town as Kummi Paati. Both of them had grown up with very little. Soon after they were married, Somu Thatha’s father started a new business, manufacturing and selling water pumps to builders. In due course, Somu had joined the business, which had prospered. When things had started to improve, they had purchased the three-bedroom flat in Shanthi Colony. At the time, it had seemed luxurious to Kummi Paati.
The business had expanded even further. Her husband often spoke to her about it, talking her through decisions he had to make and wanting to know what she thought. Despite the increasing profitability of Sekar Pumps, they had continued to live their life the same as before. She did not want for more. In fact, now that her children had moved out, the flat felt too big to her – except when they visited, at which time she was grateful for the space. What would she do with a bigger house? Just more rooms to keep clean, with no upside. Or a fancy car? They had a good car, a Maruti 800 that her husband felt comfortable driving through the hectic Chennai traffic. It took them from point A to point B. Wasn’t that the purpose of a car?
She wore little jewellery apart from her thali (her wedding chain), the diamond earrings that had been given to her by her father on the occasion of her marriage and two gold bangles on each wrist, a sign that she was a married woman. She had some more eye-catching wedding jewellery, for special occasions. And she had saris enough.
The money Sekar Pumps made had been useful when first her son and then her daughter had wanted to study overseas. The fees at the universities abroad had shocked her. And yet, an overseas education was what her children had wanted. So, as she wished for them to have the choices and opportunities that she had never had, she convinced her husband to pay the exorbitant fees for her son and daughter to go to a university in Australia. That had been twenty or so years ago. After their education, both children had settled down in Sydney. First her son, and then her daughter.
She still missed them, every single day. Visits like the one now seemed few and far between – but it kept the heartache from becoming entirely unbearable. Just.
She was brought out of her reverie by the milk starting to foam. As soon as it boiled, she added the thick coffee decoction to it. She had made the decoction the day before by allowing hot water to slowly drip through a large amount of coffee over a number of hours. She was mixing in the sugar and frothing the coffee when her husband walked into the room. He went straight to the prayer room, just off to the side of the kitchen, to perform his morning devotions.
Somu Thatha was almost six feet tall. Kummi Paati looked tiny next to him. But then, she looked tiny next to most people. Where she was pleasantly rounded, he was bony and gangly. But like Kummi Paati, he had a kind face. Kummi Paati had not known him well – or at all, in fact – when her marriage to him had been arranged. She had been sixteen years old, which was old to be getting married compared to many other girls of her generation. She hadn’t minded not being married – she had enjoyed school, enjoyed learning. But she had known it couldn’t last.
It could have been worse. Somu Thatha, the boy who had been chosen for her, was only four years older than her, which was not too bad. And she had not heard anything negative about him. In the small town in which they lived, gossip spread quickly. Had he been one of those rowdy boys, always whistling at girls or chasing them on his bicycle, she would have known. And after she had been told what was to happen, she had managed to take a look at him over the compound wall that separated their two houses. Not that she could have done anything about it if she hadn’t liked what she saw. But she wanted to try and get a sense of what was in store for her.
He had spotted her staring over the wall. And he had smiled.
She thought to herself that he had a pleasant smile. Not the smile of a boy who would beat her or say cruel things.
He approached the boundary wall and she had stood, rooted to the spot. If her stepmother had come out and seen her, she would be beaten with a stick. Such behaviour was considered fast, and if people heard she was speaking to boys over the boundary wall, she would never get married.
‘Hello,’ he had said.
‘He-hello.’
‘Did they speak to you, then?’
She nodded.
‘And what do you think?’
She stared at him. What did she think? Why was he asking her that? Was it a trap?
He was waiting for an answer.
‘Do you wish to be married to me?’ he asked.
‘I – I believe our horoscopes are a good match,’ she said. ‘My father said so. Said it was a much better match than–’
She broke off, blushing.
His smile broadened.
‘I am glad they are a good match. I would be very happy to be married to you. But if you are not–’
‘No, there’s nothing like that! Nothing like that at all. I – I, too ...’
She trailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence. Then she jumped as she heard her stepmother calling her.
‘Kummi! Where is that child? I asked her to wash and sweep the front porch ten minutes ago!’
Still she stood rooted to the spot, until he spoke again.
‘You should go now.’
She nodded, and had just picked up the broom when her stepmother spotted her. She barely heard the scolding as she silently swept the porch. She was thinking of a pair of kind, smiling, brown eyes.
#
‘Coffee smells good,’ her husband said, emerging from the prayer room.
Kummi Paati turned around and handed him a stainless-steel tumbler full to the brim with hot, frothy filter coffee. She poured the rest of the coffee into two similar tumblers.
‘Pooncholai! Come and take your coffee!’ she called out.
The small maidservant, who arrived between 7.30 and 8 every morning, appeared in an instant. Kummi Paati handed her one of the two remaining tumblers and carried the last one out to where her husband sat on the balcony.
Their flat was on the first floor of Block A, on one end of the colony, right beside one set of scooter garages. The other scooter garages were on the opposite side, next to Block E. When they had initially looked for a home, she had hoped for a ground-floor flat. These were slightly more expensive but came with a small garden area. But there were none available, and so they took a first-floor flat. Over the years, she had come to appreciate the vantage point that the balcony offered her, even as she regretted the growing impact of the stairs on her knees.
On the balcony were two wooden armchairs. Despite the heat, they almost always sat here to drink their coffee. Only when the monsoons were upon them, and the rain was pelting down sideways, did they sit inside. Even then, they would leave the door slightly ajar. Kummi Paati loved the smell of the rain.
Somu Thatha was already seated in the chair on the right-hand side, gingerly taking small sips of his too-hot coffee, as he did every morning. Kummi Paati usually sat in the other chair. But today, she walked to one end of the balcony and peered down towards the scooter garages. There was a lot of activity going on. All the office workers were leaving for the day, chatting to one another as they sped off. As she watched, she saw Mr Suresh, Ravi’s father, walk towards his garage and unlock the door. He walked in and almost immediately exited backwards, holding his scooter upright. Then he kickstarted it and drove off, leaving the garage door unlocked.
‘Coffee is very good today,’ Somu Thatha said.
Kummi Paati still stood at the edge of the balcony, watching the other people leaving for their work.
‘Kummi? What are you thinking?’
‘Me? Oh. Nothing. Nothing at all.’
She turned away, sat down in her armchair and gave her husband her full attention.
#
Just before 4 pm that evening, Kummi Paati made her way to Mythili Mart, the corner store just outside Shanthi Colony. She smiled politely at Dilruba, one of the security guards, on her way out.
‘Namaste ji,’ he said. Kummi Paati smiled and returned the greeting.
Dilruba was not from Chennai; he was from what Kummi Paati called The North. She had never been to The North. She knew they spoke Hindi there, and Punjabi and other languages that were as alien to her as French or German. They had different food too – she had eaten it occasionally, mostly when she visited her best friend, Neela. It was good, but her rice-based diet, as opposed to their wheat-based one, suited her much better. Rice filled you up in a way that roti did not. She had heard that it was supposed to be bad to eat too much rice – but she and Somu Thatha only ate one proper meal per day, and at their age surely it was too late to change their ways. Besides, her people had been eating this way for generations. That being the case, how bad could it be?
Her grandchildren enjoyed a lot of the food from The North, though, and for their sakes Kummi Paati had asked Neela to teach her some recipes. Channa bhatura was a favourite (chickpea curry with fried wheat pancakes), and so was pav bhaji (mixed vegetable curry eaten with buttered buns). She had to admit these had grown on her as well.
She was walking as she pondered all this, and soon arrived at Mythili Mart. Somu Thatha usually did most of the shopping. But she still found herself popping over to the Mart on a fairly regular basis, for something or the other. It was not as cheap as the large store where Somu Thatha bought most of their provisions, but it was right there. And today, it was playing exactly the role she had hoped.
As she walked under the awning, relieved to be out of the still hot sun, she saw Ravi standing in front of a big basket of balls, trying to choose one. He picked one up and then another, throwing each ball into the air and then catching it, as though trying to gauge its weight. Kummi Paati did not draw attention to herself. She didn’t let Senthil, the shopkeeper, see her. He was serving someone else, a younger woman of around forty or forty-five, dressed in a salwar kameez, who was haggling over the price of the rice he stocked.
Kummi Paati pretended to be looking for a plastic basket. This was as good an excuse as any, as she used the plastic baskets from the Mart to store non-perishables and occasionally had to replace them. For a good ten minutes or so, she watched in silence as customers came and went. Some were from Shanthi Colony and some were from different houses or apartments around the neighbourhood.
Finally, she saw what she was waiting for. A group of boys from New Look Manere arrived. Kummi Paati had often seen them there in the evening, spending their pocket money on chips or chocolates.
The boys had seen Ravi, who appeared to have decided on which ball he wanted. As he turned around to wait for the shopkeeper to be available to serve him, he saw the group of boys. His eyes widened slightly and he swallowed. Twice.
‘Hey, man,’ said Arun, one of the New Look boys. ‘It’s the vice-captain.’
‘Oy, Tendulkar,’ said another, ‘you’re just now buying a ball?’
They laughed.
‘No! I mean, yes! I mean ...’
‘What do you mean? Huh? Are you buying a ball or not?’ Arun asked.
‘Y – Yes. Yes I am. Why shouldn’t I?’
‘No reason! No reason at all! I thought you took the match seriously, but if you don’t even have a ball to practise with ...’
The group of boys all laughed again.
‘Dai, don’t laugh, da. He has probably had to save two months’ pocket money to buy a ball!’
Peals of mirth erupted, and the boy who cracked the joke slapped the others on the back as they chortled.
Kummi Paati had seen enough. She stepped forward, all four feet ten inches of her, and glared at the group of boys. The laughter died almost instantly, and one or two of the boys even had the grace to look ashamed.
‘Good evening,’ Kummi Paati said.
She got muttered greetings from most of the boys in response. Then she turned to Ravi.
‘Ravi, if you are done with your purchases, perhaps you could hold my umbrella as we walk back to the colony? I find it so tiring in the sun.’
Ravi nodded, paid for the ball quickly, and left the Mart with Kummi Paati. As they moved out of the shade of the awning, Ravi sighed in relief.
‘I do not like those boys,’ Kummi Paati said. ‘They are not of good character, I think. They spend their parents’ money and they think it makes them better than other people. No,’ she shook her head, ‘no, I do not like those boys.’
‘Neither do I, Kummi Paati. That’s why we have to win the match.’
They were back inside the colony now, and near the playground. Kummi Paati watched as Ravi ran towards his friends, holding the ball high up above his head. His teammates erupted in cheers.
‘Hey, throw to me! Throw to me!’ Babu said.
Ravi threw the ball to Babu, who examined it then tossed it back and forth between his hands.
‘This is a good ball!’ Babu said.
Ravi grinned, as the other boys began to clamour for their turn with the ball.
Kummi Paati left them to their game and walked over to the hose. She was watching the children play out of the corner of her eye as she took the hose down from its hook and turned on the tap.
As she made her way around the playground, she kept her eye on the boys as they started their practice. She had watched a lot of cricket in her time – on the television, in the street and in playgrounds – and she knew what made for a good player.
Babu was bowling to one of his team members. He bowled reasonably well, she thought. Not well enough to justify the batsman only managing to hit one of the six balls that he had just bowled to him, but he was quite good. For the next half-hour, she watched the others play as well. Ravi kept the wicket and did a reasonable job. There were, she thought, perhaps five good players out of eleven. Babu was trying to spread the best fielders around, to get as much coverage as he could. But no matter what he did, there were patches where the balls would get through for a four, usually batted to where some girls were playing badminton. Then one of the boys would run over and collect the ball, apologising to the girls for having disrupted their game.
When this had happened for the fifth or sixth time in as many minutes, one of the girls, Priya, picked up the ball and turned around. She was throwing the ball up in the air with one hand and then catching it, giving the ball barely a glance as she did so.
‘If you boys are going to disrupt our game, we might as well join you,’ she said.
Her friends chimed in.
‘Yes, why don’t you give us a go on the pitch?’
‘You girls don’t even know how to play cricket!’ Babu said. ‘We don’t have time now to teach you. Maybe another time.’
Priya looked annoyed at this.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, still tossing the ball in the air.
‘Fine, fine, we’ll see,’ said Babu impatiently.
Priya shrugged at this and threw the ball straight towards the stumps. They fell down in a heap and her friends cheered.
‘Now look what you’ve done! I have to set up the stump again!’ Babu said.
‘Maybe I do know a thing or two about cricket though, yeah?’ Priya said. Then she turned her back on the boys, picked up her badminton racket, and went back to her game with her friends.
Kummi Paati continued to watch the children play as she finished her watering. They were still playing when she finished, gathered the hose and put it back on its hook and walked slowly back to her flat. Boys and girls alike shouted across the playground, an exuberant sound expressing all the enjoyment of youth.
She wished she’d had more time to enjoy hers.
She had been perhaps seven years old when she had first realised things were starting to change. She had a brother, one year older than her, and a sister who was a year younger. The other two children in the house were the two daughters her father had with her stepmother, and they were babies.
Kummi used to play with her brother on the street, together with all the other children from the neighbourhood. And then her stepmother had started to call for her to help in the kitchen. Not every day, but every other day.
‘You must learn all of these things if you want to be married some day,’ her stepmother would say. ‘Otherwise who will marry a girl who cannot cook?’
Kummi didn’t really care. She wanted to play with her brother and her friends. But she knew she must do as she was told and so, on the days when her stepmother called her into the kitchen, she went quietly and did her duty.
By the time she was eight, she did not have to be called. As soon as the school day was over, she would eat, have a rest, and then in the evening, she and her stepmother would cook. Her stepmother was a good cook, and she taught Kummi well. Kummi had thought herself indifferent to cooking as a hobby until her granddaughters, Nina and Alisha, had introduced her to cooking shows the previous year.
‘Paati,’ Nina had said, ‘have you watched MasterChef?’
‘No. What is it?’
Alisha replied, cutting her sister off, as she often did.
‘It’s a television show, Paati, a competition. To be the best cook. I think you’d really like it.’
‘Would you like to watch it with us?’ Nina asked. She held out her hand to Kummi Paati, inviting her to sit next to them.
Kummi Paati had sat down to watch the show, largely because she didn’t want to dampen the enthusiasm of her young granddaughter. But fifteen minutes in, she found herself interested. So many things that they did had fancy names, but she did those same things in her kitchen every day! She watched as the young cooks – or chefs, as they were called, which seemed to her another fancy name that had no real purpose – made silly mistakes. Mistakes for which she would have been hit with a wooden spoon when she was eight or nine, and by the standards of her day, deservedly so. At the end of the hour, she leaned back on the sofa and saw that her granddaughters were grinning.
‘Are there more episodes?’ Kummi Paati asked.
#
The next evening, at around 3.45 pm, Kummi Paati made herself two dosais – crispy rice and lentil pancakes – and ate them with leftover sambhar. At around 4 pm, her husband came home early, as she had requested. She made dosai for him, Shakuntala and the twins and then made three cups of coffee for the adults.
It was just after 4.30 when they all made it downstairs to the playground. Somu Thatha went to the hose and prepared to water the plants. The girls went to the swings and started playing.
Kummi Paati looked around. Sure enough, the young boys were there, practising their game. She watched them for a while and then left the playground.
Kummi Paati began a slow walk around the colony. She had a destination in mind; she just didn’t want to call attention to herself by heading straight there. She passed the time of day with her neighbours as she walked, many of whom asked why she wasn’t watering the plants that evening. After she explained for the fifth time that Thatha was doing it while she went for a walk, she almost wished she could just wear a sign around her neck and be done with it.
It was nearly 5 pm when she got to the back of the colony, behind all the apartment buildings. This was where all the big water tanks were – three large, concrete cylinders that were fifteen feet high and supplied water to the homes of Shanthi Colony. There was a small open area between the tanks and the back compound wall. As there wasn’t much else there, the area was often unoccupied.
But it wasn’t today. As she got closer, she could hear voices. While she could not hear what was being said, she knew now that she was on the right track.
‘Hey, do it properly, okay?’ a familiar voice said.
‘Excuse me, I am!’
‘Come on, guys, don’t fight,’ a third voice said.
‘I’m not fighting! She’s fighting,’ the second person replied.
‘Okay, okay, sorry, di.’
‘Yeah it’s okay. Shall I go bo–’
As Kummi Paati walked into their line of sight, the girl trailed off and all three of them looked incredibly sheepish.
‘I thought I’d find you here,’ Kummi Paati said. ‘So you know quite a bit about how to play cricket then.’
Priya spoke first, as Kummi Paati had known she would. Every teenage group of this kind had a ringleader, and Priya was obviously it.
‘There’s nothing wrong with that. Girls can do anything these days! Why shouldn’t we know how to play cricket? We play better than most of those boys, in fact.’
Kummi Paati sat down on an overturned bucket and looked at the flushed face of the indignant thirteen-year-old.
‘You are right. Girls can do anything these days,’ she said. ‘Very different from my time. It is a good thing, I think, although I don’t know how many men like this. Still, it is worth it if girls aren’t pushed into the kitchen, or forced to marry when they want to do other things. After all, the men usually find something to be unhappy about, don’t they?’
The three girls looked at her, possibly unsure about where to go with this.
‘Sorry, I wandered from the point. At my age, people often do.’
She smiled and then continued.
‘Yes, there is nothing wrong with girls playing cricket. As I said, it is a good thing.’
She cleared her throat.
‘There is something wrong with stealing though.’
Priya looked away.
‘Kummi Paati, we – we weren’t exactly stealing. More like borrowing.’
‘Do you call that borrowing? Going to someone’s garage when they are not at home and taking something of theirs without their knowledge does not sound like borrowing to me.’
‘We meant to give it back! We noticed that Ravi’s father never locked the door until after he drove his scooter home at night and we thought we could practise a bit one day and then put the ball back before the next evening.’
‘But you didn’t. And this didn’t happen just once. It happened a few times.’
‘It was an accident! I – we felt really bad about losing them.’
‘Why didn’t you ask your father for a ball?’
‘I did. We all did,’ Priya said. ‘They – he just laughed and said no. He said girls don’t need to play cricket.’
Kummi Paati looked at the downcast face of the girl. A child, really, who was trying to find her place in a man’s world and was already being shut out. She stood up.
‘Well, kanna, we have our work cut out for us. First there is something important you should understand. Things are not different today for girls because people hid behind water tanks and learned things that boys didn’t want them to learn. It happened because many women – women who were braver than me, I must say – challenged men openly. And proved them wrong.’
‘I’m not scared, Kummi Paati.’
‘I didn’t think you were. Come, let us go to the playground.’
Back at the playground, Somu Thatha was just putting the hose back on its hook. The boys were still practising.
‘Dai, that’s the fifth ball you’ve missed, da!’ Babu shouted. ‘Pay attention!’
The target of his wrath, a slightly older boy named Madhu, glared at Babu.
‘If you stop chucking, I can maybe hit something.’
‘Who is chucking, da? Don’t just say whatever comes into your mouth without thinking, okay?’
‘You also don’t–’
He stopped short as he noticed Kummi Paati walking over.
‘Babu, I thought you said that you were going to allow the girls to join your practice today.’
Babu looked utterly exasperated but respect for his elders forced him to hold back what he really wanted to say. Instead he muttered, ‘But Kummi Paati ... our practice ... New Look ...’
‘All that is fine. Ten minutes of letting someone else bat is not going to be what causes you to lose. Priya,’ she said, not waiting for Babu to respond, ‘you come here and bat.’
She held her hand out to Madhu for the bat.
‘Hmph,’ he said, as he passed the bat to Kummi Paati. ‘Good luck, Priya.’
He stifled a snort as he walked away from the pitch.
The Priya who stepped up to the crease was a markedly less confident person than the one who had spoken to Kummi Paati ten minutes earlier. She cleared her throat but said nothing. Babu walked to the other end of the crease and bowled. The ball hurtled through the air. Priya swung the willow ... and the bat whooshed through the air as the ball landed neatly into the wicketkeeper’s waiting hands.
A few scattered giggles broke out. Priya clenched her teeth, but still said nothing. Babu looked at Kummi Paati, a pleading expression on his face, but Kummi Paati did not change her countenance at all and he slowly walked back to the end of the crease.
The second ball sped through the air, faster than the first, as though buoyed by the thrower’s annoyance. Priya swung again and this time, made contact. Thwack! The ball flew through the air, past one surprised fielder, and made it to the boundary line.
The two other girls whooped and cheered. Babu stared at Priya, his jaw slack.
‘That ... that shouldn’t have gotten through ... I mean, we weren’t expecting ... our fielders never thought ...’
Priya raised her chin as he stammered out excuses. The glint in her eye was back.
‘Well now they know what to expect. Shall we continue?’
Silently, he walked back to the end of the pitch. He rubbed the ball on his shorts, ran a short distance and bowled the ball towards Priya.
As soon as Priya raised her bat, Kummi Paati knew she had been right about where all the balls had gone. The bat connected with the ball with a solid, reassuring thud. The ball soared overhead, well out of the reach of the now alert boys and over the playground fence. It landed on the concrete forecourt of one of the apartment buildings.
‘Does that count as a six?’ Priya asked politely, breaking the ensuing silence.
‘I – we never – I mean, yes. Yes, that’s a six.’
One of the boys ran out to retrieve the ball. Priya finished the over with a respectable fourteen runs in total and handed the bat to Geetha, her friend.
‘Who wants to bowl?’ Babu asked, looking at his team. No one responded. Finally, Sulochana, the third girl, stepped forward.
‘I will,’ she said.
Babu threw the ball at her and she caught it neatly. She jogged to his end of the crease as Babu walked away, his shoulders sagging.
They all watched as the two girls played. There were no more sixes, but a few boundaries put paid to the idea that Priya was the only one with talent. After another over, Geetha handed the bat to one of the boys and took his place as a fielder. When Sulochana got him out, she took his place and gave one of the boys the ball.
Babu stood off to one side, watching the game unfold. Kummi Paati walked over to him.
‘What do you think, Babu?’ she asked him. ‘Is this talent worth having on your team?’
‘They are very good players, but ...’
‘But what?’
‘I – what if the New Look fellows say they won’t allow girls?’
Kummi Paati smiled at him.
‘Don’t worry. They will.’
‘You think so?’
‘Oh, yes. And then they will have quite a surprise in store for them!’
Babu grinned at Kummi Paati. Priya looked in their direction and walked over to join them. Babu stuck his hand out towards Priya.
‘I should have asked you to play with us before. I’m sorry. Will you join the team now?’
Priya shook his hand so hard he winced slightly.
‘I will, but I have to tell you something first. I – I’m sorry too. About the balls.’
Babu’s brow wrinkled for a moment, then cleared.
‘You?’ Babu said. ‘It was you who stole all the – but why would – ohhhhh ...’
He was silent for a moment, his head down in thought, and Priya continued.
‘We didn’t mean to lose the balls either. We just hit them too hard sometimes and well ... we thought your parents would buy you more. Whereas our parents laughed at us for wanting to play cricket.’
Babu looked up at this.
‘Hmm. Just like I did,’ he said. ‘I think – well, if I had let you join our game in the first place ... well anyway, maybe we should just call it even.’
Priya smiled.
‘Okay, captain.’
#
Nearly two weeks later, on a Saturday afternoon, Kummi Paati and Somu Thatha were sitting on the balcony. They had just finished their 4pm tiffin. The twins were playing indoors. Somu Thatha looked replete.
After he dabbed a small speck of ridge-gourd chutney from his lips he said, ‘Kummi, that peerkangai thogaiyal was excellent.’
Kummi Paati smiled. Her husband loved chutneys and she so rarely made them now that her children weren’t at home.
‘Just amazing,’ he continued. ‘Never had anything like it.’
So this was his new tactic, she thought. He had tried asking her to make chutneys, and she had explained that the extra work was hardly worth it for just the two of them. Then he had tried what she could only describe as sorrowful hinting. Now it was outright flattery.
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ she said.
He opened his mouth, no doubt about to continue to expostulate the virtues of her chutneys versus store-bought chutneys when they heard a big cheer. They got up from their armchairs and looked over the side of the balcony.
A group of children, perhaps twenty in all, were entering the colony accompanied by their parents. There was much cheering and shouting, and the centre of attention was a large trophy being carried by Babu. As they watched, Babu handed over the trophy to Priya. They were walking under Kummi Paati’s balcony and snatches of conversation drifted up towards her amidst the noise and kerfuffle.
‘... take turns keeping in our houses ... wouldn’t have won without you ... great captaincy ... great team ... great fun ...’
The group kept on walking. As they were about to go around the corner of the building, Priya alone turned back and looked up to Kummi Paati’s balcony. They smiled at one another. And then as Kummi Paati watched, Babu called out to Priya and she turned away.
Somu Thatha cleared his throat.
‘Now, when it comes to your curry leaf chutney ...’
#
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