Love Marriage Read online

  LOVE MARRIAGE

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  In this global-scattered Sri Lankan family . . .

  The rule is that all families . . .

  Murali: It had once been thought . . .

  Murali: He was the first in . . .

  Vani: He met her, my mother . . .

  The Sri Lankan elders of New York . . .

  Oceans away, families exploded. True to form . . .

  The wedding: It was cheap . . .

  This is not the story they . . .

  Even now, my parents still love . . .

  Black July: More than two decades . . .

  My parents named me Yalini, after . . .

  Everything in this place—so far . . .

  School did not make me happy . . .

  He had decided that we were . . .

  By the time the car rounded . . .

  In the days after that, when . . .

  I wanted, finally, to be a doctor . . .

  Although I would have said otherwise . . .

  It used to be that you . . .

  Janani: She was cousin, although I . . .

  When I saw him my mouth . . .

  Kumaran: My uncle. He was done . . .

  Kumaran: He came to us bearing . . .

  Kumaran: With him, now we too . . .

  Toronto: For years, Tamil refugees of . . .

  Now, finally, a year later and . . .

  The lights were not on in . . .

  Kumaran: He said, I want to . . .

  My father got a leave of . . .

  I was born lucky: I have . . .

  Part 1: [ondu] - Murali Not Yet My Father

  Murali: He, too, grew up without . . .

  It did rain on the day . . .

  Ariyalai stopped burning its dead at . . .

  Murali: He was the youngest, and . . .

  Everyone in Ariyalai walked in pairs . . .

  Tharshi did not hold a grudge . . .

  Ganesha, the god of scholars and luck . . .

  Not everything goes according to plan . . .

  It took a long time before . . .

  And it happened as Tharshi had . . .

  Instead of sending his own family . . .

  Tharshi bowed her black head . . .

  Her father asked her to do . . .

  Jegan and Tharshi were almost a . . .

  Tharshi: Although she did not say . . .

  They made the first fortnight of . . .

  After medical school he never saw . . .

  When he took the test again . . .

  Part 2: [rendu] - Death Creeping Toward Us

  Suthan: Decades later, another man, deciding . . .

  Tea: This is a civilizing thing . . .

  Part 3: [mundu] - Vani Not Yet My Mother

  Vani: She stepped onto the escalator . . .

  My mother's family identifies itself first . . .

  Vairavan: He was a postmaster . . .

  His wife found him lying bloody . . .

  They never convicted anyone in the murder . . .

  No one ever said it had to . . .

  But first they were married . . .

  When mayuri's brothers and sisters saw . . .

  The porch visits stopped. At first . . .

  Years passed, and so Vairavan was . . .

  Sometimes this is how Marriages are . . .

  Harini at thirty: She remained painfully . . .

  Some marriages do that. They go . . .

  For ten years harini died that . . .

  My mother knew and loved her aunts . . .

  And yet, Vani did not choose . . .

  I have learned that one way . . .

  Like almost every member of his family . . .

  I think that my mother was . . .

  The others, too, all found their . . .

  The week before haran left Sri Lanka . . .

  And so from the time she . . .

  Part 4: [nallu] - Death Drawing Nearer

  Kumaran: My uncle, whom I loved. . . .

  Vijendran: A man whom my uncle . . .

  Kalayani: My aunt arrives in the . . .

  Lucky: Among the man who came . . .

  Rajani: I liked her because of . . .

  After that, I went out with . . .

  Janani, Yalini, Rajie: Three girls together . . .

  Part 5: [anju] - Kumaran Who Stood Between Them

  Conflict was all around Vani, who . . .

  Kumaran: He was a student . . .

  Kumaran really disappeared for the first . . .

  Kumaran: In the not-spring of 1976 . . .

  Kumaran: Over the years his face . . .

  They were building a short wall . . .

  Kumaran began as someone who planned . . .

  After Kumaran disappeared, my mother did . . .

  Kumaran was the only one who . . .

  Suthan: How is someone a Tiger . . .

  Suthan: I did not realize that . . .

  Part 6: [aru] - Murali Edging Ever Closer

  The village of Aritalai has been . . .

  My father came from a family . . .

  When he was twenty-three and . . .

  Like, Logan, Neelan was the eldest son . . .

  Eyes that see into other countries . . .

  The doctors told Tharshi that Uma . . .

  No more was said of it . . .

  It happened again one day on . . .

  Tharshi walked all over Kandy Road . . .

  They took Uma to another doctor . . .

  Years later, when the little boy . . .

  Part 7: [elu] - Vani Edging Ever Closer

  If the story of that happened . . .

  The friend's name was Shanthi . . .

  They lived their lives together . . .

  One of Mayuri's students was the . . .

  Family is family, and so Sarojini . . .

  But by now, Logan was in Canada . . .

  There were letters first. Then phone calls . . .

  Nearly a year later, Shanthi herself . . .

  One month later, Logan receives . . .

  Part 8: [ettu]- Kumaran Not Yet Departed

  My mother's father too dead before . . .

  Kumaran grew away from his family . . .

  Kumaran was a Jaffna Tamil by birth . . .

  But Kumaran did not really think . . .

  Because he still did not have . . .

  Kumaran thought he might be falling . . .

  From there they went to Delhi . . .

  But he had actually become more . . .

  After visiting Kalyani in Colombo . . .

  Nearly twenty years later, a doctor . . .

  The intersection of war and love . . .

  I must go outside myself to . . .

  And now, Murali remembers what Uma . . .

  Janani: She wears another Wedding-Red sari . . .

  Part 9: [ompathu] - Janani And Yalini Finally Their Daughters

  Children are born to be married . . .

  In 1985, the only time I . . .

  There was a day in that trip . . .

  Years later, when Tharshi was sick . . .

  And I will have places to . . .

  A girl who looks like her . . .

  Tamil has two hundred and forty-seven letters . . .

  I was born into a community . . .

  Even inside my own family . . .

  On Christmas in England, it rains . . .

  That room was filled with people . . .

  I have dinner with my family . . .

  Suthan: He is unsurprised, and that is . . .

  Kumaran: In my head, I am . . .

  It
is at my cousin Janani's kalyānam, . . .

  When Janani told me that she . . .

  In April, before he died . . .

  I was born lucky: I grew . . .

  Kumaran: the last time I talked to . . .

  Kumaran had grown up with my mother . . .

  My cousin Janani is getting married . . .

  On one day during this time . . .

  Kumaran and I are, after all . . .

  After my uncle died, I returned . . .

  My father watches me. Am I . . .

  Kumaran: He would have been impressed . . .

  At the cremation site, Chemmani . . .

  Earth, fire, water, ether, and wind . . .

  Selavu: The day after the funeral . . .

  Ettu Kalakkiratu: Eight days after . . .

  Anthiratti: Sixteen days after Kumaran died . . .

  Her father died and became a god . . .

  The last part of the wedding . . .

  This is an arranged marriage too . . .

  Acknowledgments

  A Reader's Guide

  Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion

  About the Author

  Copyright

  for

  AMMA, APPA, and DEVAN

  Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,

  We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,

  We shall have what to do after firing. But today,

  Today, we have naming of parts.

  .

  —from

  NAMING OF PARTS,

  Lessons of the War, Henry Reed

  LOVE MARRIAGE

  IN THIS GLOBAL-SCATTERED SRI LANKAN FAMILY, WE SPEAK only of two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. In reality, there is a whole spectrum in between, but most of us spend years running away from the first toward the second.

  Among the categories that bleed outside these two carefully delineated boundaries: the Self-Arranged Marriage, the Outside Marriage, the Cousin Marriage, the Village Marriage, the Marriage Abroad. There is the Marriage Without Consent. There is the Marriage Under Pressure. There is even Marrying the Enemy, who, it turns out, is not an Enemy at all.

  You cannot go unfettered into a family's history if you are one of them. The nature of certain unions will be hidden from you, rephrased to you, the subject dropped, the music changed. There is Proper Marriage; there is Improper Marriage. This Tamil family speaks of the latter in whispers.

  THE RULE IS THAT all families begin with a marriage. And the other way around.

  You don't marry a person, my father says to no one in particular. You marry a family.

  The Self-Arranged Marriage: my father has married my mother's family so successfully that he now fits into it as well as—if not better than—he fits into his own. My mother is an Ara-vindran and, further back than that, a Vairavan, which means that the members of her family—especially her siblings—are nosy, noisy, close, and concerned with domestic comforts. Years after they stopped living where they had always lived, in a small house in the village of Urelu, in the town of Jaffna, they remain connected by telephone lines and carefully written aerograms. They never forget birthdays, favorite curries, or unkindnesses. They were once three but are now two. My father loves my mother's family, and in return for that they draw him in. They have forgotten that when he wanted to marry my mother they circled around her protectively from the far corners of the globe, opposed to her marrying a man they had never even met. They only remember that she has a happy life in a country far safer than the one in which she was born.

  And twenty-five years after their wedding, my parents like to give the impression that their marriage was Arranged, because they are both very Proper. But their secret is out: they fell in love. Those who are watching can see how in certain moments they become each other. This has been their way of falling in love: the acquisition of each other's habits, mannerisms, preferences, and witticisms. They have built a wall around their two-ness, and each brick laid in place is a secret that only they share, or perhaps an exception one has made for the other. They have become an example of how you can Have Your Love and Eat It Too. They let everyone think that they took no responsibility for the way they came together. They engaged in all the dances of manners and the ceremonies involved in a Traditional Marriage, which is to say, an Arranged Marriage. This, they say, is not a romance. It begins with an introduction, a handshake, which is not the custom of the East but has become the greeting of the West. The touching of fingers is a strange, luscious intimacy, a preface to the story.

  These two, my parents, have not acknowledged their secret—perhaps not even to each other. And they have exchanged rings and vows and hearts without eliciting the frowns that Improper Marriages frequently do.

  MURALI: IT HAD ONCE been thought that the young doctor who would later become my father would not marry at all. He came from a family in Ariyalai, a village on the outskirts of Jaffna. And his was a family full of doctors, a family full of poor doctors with heart problems. His own murmured persistently; he was told he would not live past forty. Don't exert yourself too much, young man. He tempered any enthusiasm for sports, believing strenuous activity would shorten his life, moment by moment. He was last on the cricket field, first out of breath. In a family of five sisters and three brothers that was all too obsessed with Marriages (regardless of category), he decided—rather nobly—not to marry at all: he would only leave a husbandless woman like his mother. His schoolmates, with the canny cruelty of children, called him Hole-in-the-Heart.

  Every year from the age of three, when the murmur was first discovered, he had his chest x-rayed so that they could check the size of his Heart. They were afraid that it was too big. This happened sometimes to children with murmurs, the whispers of childhood turning into an adult sickness. An enlarged heart. Later, as a doctor, he would ask for impromptu ultrasounds, echo cardiograms. Sound out my heart. Please check to make sure it's still there. Do you see it? He had grown into a scientist. He wanted to know that the blood would continue its flow through his veins, that his pulse would not stop without warning one day, like an alarm clock gone off not at its appointed hour, but years too early. He wanted to see the proof of his own life for himself. He listened to his own heart sometimes when he was alone, unbuttoning his shirt as though it was a gateway into his shallow chest. He slipped in and out of radiology rooms as he pleased, without appointments. Lying on his back, his doctor's coat open, he exposed the Heart that had betrayed him to the eye of radiation. No matter which method he used to see into his own body, he would always leave with an image in hand, his sweaty fingers holding the evidence of his own mortality. Weak-kneed because he was weakhearted.

  Over the years, despite himself, he would imagine his own dying: how on his fortieth birthday he would suddenly look into some mirror and see death on a face that had always looked younger than it really was. He would be eating breakfast, or perhaps walking up the road to post a letter to his mother, and would crumble to his knees, his body collapsing limb by limb, the Heart slowing, and slowing, and slowing. The blood no longer flowing to his brain. The sound of a heart—his Heart—stopping.

  He had a dream of being buried in a coffin of red lacquer, with a crowd of mourners wearing hats, singing and carrying pictures of him. In the dream he is passed from person to person like a torch. In this absolute stillness of death, he can sense himself traveling, moved by the hands of strangers. When the crowd of mourners reaches a bridge, the undertakers take the coffin from them and begin to run. The mourners cannot cross the bridge but watch him drift away from them. He is carried away into a distant, foggy death: A vagueness. An ending.

  He wakes up. He is sweating. He is cold. As a Hindu, he will not be buried in a coffin. Someday, fire will find his body; a man of his family will hold the torch to the pyre. And then his ashes will find the sea. But as a young man, he cannot get rid of this body. It bears him up and holds him back.

  M
URALI: HE WAS THE first in his family to come to the United States. Sri Lankan doctors were well respected in the medical community there, if only because they were Asian. He had secured a position at a hospital in New England, where he would be a resident and complete his training. But it was not so easy to leave Jaffna, where he had grown up. He is not well, his relatives said to his mother, the widow. How can you send him away? His mother, Tharshi, feeling guilty and thinking that she should not let him go, asked him to stay. The young doctor, last on the cricket field and first out of breath, had never before insisted on any desire. But suddenly, like a tide, he was unstoppable. He was going. He was going. His family, like his Heart, murmured in disapproval. He left his family behind. His disapproving Heart went with him.

  His mother packed his suitcase with tea leaves, which came loose from their wrapping during the flight. When he went through customs, the agent opened the suitcase and asked him what it was. Tea—just tea that has come out of its package, sir, nothing to trouble you, Murali said. But Murali saw that the agent did not believe him. He felt himself beginning to sweat, and his Heart beginning to patter nervously. The agent called for a dog, and the dog came and smelled the suitcase and barked. Murali took his handkerchief out of his jacket pocket, knowing people were looking at him, this brown man with loose leaves in a suitcase. They had not even taken him to a private room. Embarrassing. The man called for his supervisor, who came and looked at Murali's passport again.

  A doctor, eh? the supervisor said encouragingly, and Murali nodded mutely. What is this, doctor? He told you it was tea? The man lifted a handful of leaves to flared nostrils and inhaled. You idiot, you could have smelled it yourself—it is tea. Excellent tea, actually. Ceylon tea, probably. Let him through.

  And the young doctor landed in America. He walked out into the cold. It was January, and New England, so it was cold. He had not known what that meant until this moment. As he looked out into the light and air of this place he discovered snow. The cold bit into his bones and he ignored it, because the snow was beautiful. But his Heart protested. So cold here, it murmured. Please do Shut Up, Murali told it politely. All his life he had been told his Heart was sick. He had seen his Heart himself; he was tired of its tiredness. What reason, after all, did it have to be tired? To hold him back? Fresh off the boat—so to speak, since it was actually a plane—he walked into the examining room of a heart specialist.