The Reincarnation of Chamunda by Annam Manthiram
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Many years ago, my husbandless grandmother told me of Chamunda.

 

‘She is an aspect of Durga, an evil goddess who only brings pain and suffering. Chamunda carries forth Durga’s mission wherever she goes – her emaciated form terrifies men who see her. She walks with a chain of skulls around her neck and blood on her lips.’ I held onto my mother’s hand. ‘Do you know how Ganesh rides only a rat as his vehicle? His brother, Kumara, rides a peacock. To ride below someone’s feet is lowly, degrading. These animals simply served one purpose – to transport these deities wherever they needed to go. Do you know what Chamunda’s vehicle was?’ I blinked and took a breath. ‘Her vehicle was a man. Do you know why? Chamunda rode a man because men are weak. Seema, always remember this whenever a man tells you that you cannot do something. Tell him that he once was a vehicle for a woman named Chamunda.’

 

And so, when a man who was missing a thumb came to see me during my 45th bride-viewing and told me that I was too old for him and that I should give up on marriage all together, I told him about Chamunda.

 

‘I would rather feel the impression of a young woman’s feet upon my back than
that of an old one,’ he said and left. My mother cried. I went to my room and read the obituaries.

 

Dr. Heaton Joe Smith, 78, Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida. Dr. Smith, always seen with a book in one hand and a cigar in the other, passed away Tuesday. He taught American Indian literature and has written several books on the topic. He died of gastric cancer. He is survived by his wife, Glenda, and his two children, Barbara Gloria Rice and Heaton Smith, Jr.

 

Awareness of my own mortality made life more manageable. I related it to chaos theory – over time, all things lead to disorder. The same could be applied to life: the way our skin degraded, how our lives became less tolerable and our spouses more violent.

 

‘Why do you always read the obituaries? Don’t they make you depressed?’ My younger sister asked. When prospective grooms came to view me, they saw my sister too, and wondered why they couldn’t have her instead. Big pouty lips and equally big, 80s style hair – she had the figure of Krishna’s divine beauty, Radha. She was younger than I and constantly chewed fennel seeds. Her breath smelled of mint and grass.

 

‘You make me depressed,’ I answered, and she laughed.

 

‘Funny old lady,’ she chewed. I wondered if beautiful people ever thought about their mortality in the same way. Growing old for them was the death of their material existence, of their identity. Growing old for me only meant fewer marriage proposals and more crying.

 

‘Why would I want to marry you? You can’t have children,’ one of the prospects said. I secretly wished that he was infertile.

 

 

Day 1: Preparation


I sat in a tub filled with jasmine water.

 

A woman my mother hired knelt next to me and painted henna on my fingers and wrists. She winked at me when the bathtub bubbled.

 

‘You are only woman I know who get henna treatment before marriage!’ She shouted in broken English. She spoke Hindi, I Tamil. Our languages didn’t mix, and neither did our cultures. Most North Indian men ignored me – their eyes got lost in the darkness of my skin.

 

‘You brave,’ she continued. ‘My mother you age and won’t get driver license, and you still try get marry!’ I didn’t know what courage had to do with it.

 

‘You still virgin?’ She asked.

 

‘Where did my mother find you?’

 

‘In Yellow Page. I list under “Body Art.”’ Her English became choppier as her curiosity intensified.

 

‘Quaint.’ I stopped talking, and so did she.

 

‘This is not Monopoly. Once you pass Old Age, you cannot collect a husband,’ my mother used to say. She was clever for an Indian high school dropout.

 

If virgin meant inexperienced, then wasn’t everybody a virgin? How many people could say that they had climbed a mountain? Loaded a dishwasher in less than one minute?

 

I fell asleep in the tub, and the henna woman had to wake me up.

 

‘Paati,’ she said, which meant ‘grandmother’ in Tamil. She knew a few words it seemed. ‘Wake up, otherwise you pee jasmine,’ she laughed. I blew geriatric air on her youthful face.

 

As I stood in front of my full body-length mirror, naked, dripping with the scent of tiny white flowers, I fixed duct tape across the problem areas, the areas I didn’t wish my future husband to see. I marked each with a black sharpie.

 

‘For each barrier of trust he passes, he gets one number. The higher the number, the more challenging the barrier and the more trust he needs to earn in order to gain access.’ I placed a number 50 below my waist and a number 45 on my breasts. The tape felt cool.

 

‘Time for chemical peel, ma,’ my mother called. I liked the way her accent forced her to pronounce the word ‘chemical’ with a slight lilt so that she placed more of an emphasis on the ‘m’ than needed. It made the word sound important.

 

‘Coming,’ I said, imitating that same ‘m’ sound. I felt important.

 

 

Day 2: Anticipation


Karupamma Janaki, 62, Grandmother. Ms. Janaki died of Alzheimer’s disease. In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that donations be made in her name to the City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif.

 

I wished my grandmother were still alive. Her name had meant, ‘Dark Mother,’ and that she was. After being forcibly knocked up by my mother’s father, she had been left for another lighter-skinned woman named, ‘Vellamma,’ which meant ‘White Mother.’ My grandmother hadn’t cried though. She welcomed the challenge, and felt that women only grew without the hindrance of men.

 

When her mind began to go, she became more determined to eliminate any male influences in the house. ‘If men weren’t around, we’d all have five or six arms,’ she’d say. My grandmother forbade bride-viewings in the house. My sister snuck around. I enjoyed the reprieve. My mother worried because she didn’t want us to be alone like she was. My mother hurt me, but it was difficult to hate her because I knew she cared. Now, times were stressful, and my mother was cooking. She fried when she couldn’t control things, and I wanted children. My womb was empty, like my car’s gas tank when my inconsiderate sister drove it all over town, paying visits to her many lovers.

 

After my daily read, I was in the bathroom, pulling out hairs that were not completely black. I could see my widow’s peak spreading out across the top of my large face. Gravity had played a trick on me – instead of everything drooping, everything seemed to pull towards the sky, towards heaven.

 

‘What does Jesus need with my wrinkles and my dark skin?’ I asked, looking up.

After my head ached and tiny sores shaped like little truffles broke out across my scalp from all of the hairs I had pulled out, I left the bathroom and paused on the stairway. I held the railings and peered out, looking down as if the groom and his family were already here. I would have to be reticent – that was expected of me, but that didn’t mean I had to be inanimate. I stuck my nose through the bars and daydreamed that I was the one looking, not the one being looked at.

 

What if he asked me what I liked? Grooms often did, and they seemed to expect answers like cooking or mango lassis or chubby babies. I always gave them the same answer – perhaps that was my mistake. I responded with ‘onions,’ and waited for their disturbed but sometimes curious questions.

 

I was incredibly partial to onions. I liked the wrinkly skin and the taste that was soft enough to sweeten a curry but bitter enough to bring tears to the eyes of kings.

 

I kept an abundance of onions near my bed. My sister thought that I kept them as some sort of aromatherapy – that inhaling the scent would open my pores and allow, as she put it, ‘youth nanoparticles to enter and destroy old cells.’ When I felt old, I peeled back a layer of an onion and touched the fresh meat inside. And once there was no more skin to peel back, I ate the sugary turnip-shaped heart and felt instantly young again, until it was time to peel another onion.

 

The day before this new man was to arrive, I sat and peeled fifteen onions, one for every man that had broken my heart through the process of bride-viewing.

 

 

Day 3: Anxiety


My sister was in the bathroom.

 

‘Please,’ I said, ‘my face is peeling.’

 

She didn’t answer. When she finally emerged, her hair was deliciously curled, little sprouts shaped like broccolettes. Her lips were curved and painted a blush wine with the edges blurred; so I couldn’t tell where her mouth ended and where her skin began. I put my fingers to my face, and the skin fell off in sheets.

 

‘I’m ready,’ she said, grinding her teeth on the seeds in her mouth, and even though we had six or so hours until he was to arrive, she was still more ready than I’d ever be. I had no idea what he looked like or what his parents did. I didn’t even know his name.

 

I went into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet. The floor was still wet, and I could see that my sister’s tiny feet had formed depressions in the water.

 

When I was twenty, I had my first bride-viewing. My grandmother was not home. My sister was a little girl then, and she loved me. The groom had arrived, and ironically he was the son of a friend of my grandmother’s. He was handsome like an Indian weatherman – his moustache was neatly trimmed and his shirt tucked in with no sign of future belly. His hair looked freshly cut, like the flowers that he had given to me.

 

His mother entered first. She was a simple looking woman, and I was a beautiful young woman. I had a large gap between my teeth and large hips, but I was still pretty. I had come to believe youth, not genes, made one beautiful.

 

I walked down the stairs, carrying a cup of iced masala tea. I said hello to him, smiled demurely, and then went back upstairs. I sat in front of a mirror in my room while my sister combed my hair over and over and over until I had to tell her to stop because it hurt my scalp.

 

‘Your hair is so pretty,’ she said, but she stopped.

 

I heard the door open and close, and my mother came upstairs. Her face was luminous like a cow’s eyes in India at night.

 

‘You aren’t pretty enough,’ she said, and went straight to bed. She closed her door. I had never seen her do that. She said it invited spirits, locking or closing a door. ‘You have to give them room to breathe,’ she said. ‘Otherwise they will lash out against you.’

 

My sister began to comb my hair again and even though it hurt, I let her. She kept opening her mouth, as if she were on the verge of saying something, perhaps a consolation, but I felt she feared it might make things worse. My mother didn’t care.

Every ten minutes, my mother opened the door and came out, only to say something cruel.

 

‘Gaps in the teeth of women make them promiscuous,’ and she’d go back into her room, only to emerge again to say, ‘I don’t know why Brahma gave you three hips,’ and she kept on and on and on, at one point calling me a ‘bitch’ and an ‘old bitch,’ which hadn’t even made sense because I was only twenty then. Finally my sister asked, ‘What does bitch mean?’ and that had stopped my mother.

 

Now, I peeled my face in the mirror. I laid the pieces of skin delicately on the toilet cover. They looked very brown against the aqua. I arranged them to spell, ‘eye,’ and when I looked closer into the mirror, I saw the pieces of dried skin left on my face spelled ‘ugly’ in the reflection.

 

‘Leave me alone,’ I said quietly to the mirror. ‘Leave me alone,’ I said a little louder. Finally I shouted, ‘Leave me alone!’ My sister pounded on the door.

 

‘Nobody wants you,’ she said, and I imagined that one of her lashes fell to her cheek and rested there, the way butterflies rest on a blossoming dahlia.

I sat on the shower floor and let the water run over my body, puckering it until I couldn’t tell where my wrinkles began anymore.

 

When I was forty, I had been seen by a tall man with a great wealth of hair. He had large, wide eyes shaped like little boats and more black eyelashes than I. He walked awkwardly, as if unsure of himself, but his voice steadied him. Together, his imperfections worked to create a perfect being.

 

He had come alone, which was odd for a bride-viewing. My mother, doped up on sleeping pills and codeine (the heat had been unbearable, and she suffered severe migraines during the worst of it), silenced her urge to control; so she had forgotten to cook. I phoned in a feast from Senorita Lupe’s, a pseudo-Mexican restaurant down the street, to cater to a possible crowd of fifteen or more. Our house smelled of refried beans and homemade tortillas. The food sat, wilting, while he and I talked, and my sister left the house barely clothed. My mother, too tired to enforce proper bride-viewing etiquette, didn’t bother to hush me as I spoke, or push my head down as I looked into his eyes directly. She told us that she ‘wanted to present my baby pictures’ but never returned. Later, I found her passed out at the foot of her bed, one hand over the edge, not quite able to make it.

 

We had talked about the weather, mostly. He liked it sunny; I preferred the rain and clouds.

 

‘I like the way the darkness hides my face,’ I had said. I didn’t like how weak it made me sound, but I didn’t think he’d mind. The left side of his face was scarred, from what I could tell.

 

‘The sun can also hide, by blinding the eyes,’ he said. I imagined his vision of the sun and shielded my eyes.

 

‘Okay,’ I said in response, which seemed fatuous compared to his eloquence. I nibbled on a tortilla.

 

‘Kiss me,’ he said.

 

‘Okay,’ I said again, and I did. It felt good, but a little dry. He stopped after a few seconds, and when I reached in again – Krishna, I couldn’t remember the last time I had kissed a man – he put his hand up and gestured for me to stop.

 

‘I have a limit,’ he said, and then he had gotten up and left. My mother never heard from him again.

 

Day 4: Arrival


I put on a blue dress.

 

‘What is that? A frock? Did you steal that from my apron drawer?’ My mother always knew what to say.

 

I went back into my room and shut the door. The blue hid things, particularly old things.

 

‘Why do you still live at home?’ My sister asked outside the door. Another one, like my mother. ‘Get out old pig,’ she said. I was quite sure that she, her friends and her Karsh Kale-loving boyfriends were entertained by stories of me trying to find a husband. If only I didn’t care. If only I didn’t need their approval. But that was what Indians did – they made you have a need that you may not ever have had before. And then you were so consumed with trying to fill it, that you destroyed yourself in the process.

 

I ate more onions and peeled more skin – the onion’s or mine? They felt one and the same.

 

I came down the stairs, and I was wearing a sari. I had worn it during my 15th bride-viewing. I remembered them all so vividly. I hadn’t worn the sari since for reasons that were too painful to recall.

 

There had been a few who had been nice. I remembered one odd man. He had a penchant for chicken nuggets and liked to discuss abstract theories and whistle while he peed.

 

‘For me, it’s enlightenment to mix the act of urination with the art of philosophy,’ he’d said. I only laughed.

 

When my mother had suggested we take a short walk to the 7-Eleven down the street to get to ‘know each other,’ I couldn’t resist the chance. I wanted to know what else he did – if he played Twister with the moles that danced along his arm or if he stole his mother’s underwear when she wasn’t looking.

 

‘I don’t want to go,’ he’d said when I asked him. My hand was in his face. I was thirty-two.

 

‘Why not?’ I asked, and my mother shushed me.

 

‘He doesn’t like to walk,’ his mother said almost defensively, as if I had asked him to go run a marathon.

 

‘Why not?’ I asked again, and my mother shushed me once again.

When I returned from the 7-Eleven with my mother’s clove cigarettes and a Twinkie in tow, they were all gone.

 

‘Did he like me?’ I asked, but asking such a question was like asking my sister how I looked – I most certainly was going to be insulted. I expected it every time, but every time it still hurt.

 

‘No,’ she had said. I didn’t find out until months later that he walked with a severe limp, but he was the one to reject me because I had been too forward.

 

Siva French Balasupramanian, 56, Engineer and Real Estate Owner. Author of travel books such as ‘Teaching Tamil Abroad’ and ‘Kottalam Falls,’ his number one devotion had been to his two dogs, Rama and Lakshmana. He is survived by his brother.

 

I cried. It was men like that – men who were kind-hearted who broke my heart. They preferred to live alone, among their words, books, animals. They counted their successes by the number of lives that had touched them, not the number of lives they had touched.

 

My reading of the obituaries became more frantic. I started to read a line from one and then a line from another. I could not tell whose obituary belonged to whom. They all sounded the same after a while – they were all about the impermanence of life, and how we all tried to leave our mark on this world.

 

The doorbell rang, and my onion had wilted. He was here. And the cycle began again.

 

I took the tape and started to wrap it around my entire body, one side after another after another after another.

 

*


This story first appeared in Straylight Magazine vol. 3.2, Fall 2009.

Annam Manthiram is the author of the novel After the Tsunami (forthcoming - Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2011) and a short story collection, Dysfunction, which was a finalist in the 2010 Elixir Press Fiction Award and received Honorable Mention in Leapfrog Press' 2010 fiction contest.

A graduate of the M.A. Writing program at the University of Southern California, Ms. Manthiram resides in New Mexico with her husband, Alex, and son, Sathya. You can visit her online at AnnamManthiram.com.