Red Indian Sun

Then I, the young man, his brother, his sister, and her daughter went to Tohana to shop and bought me beautiful Indian clothes – I chose shalwar-kameez in marine blue and a shawl over my head – dupatta. On the way back, his sister, a pleasant girl, got off the bus, and we drove on to the village. From now on, I wore an Indian national dress. In the village, none of the married women wore European clothes.

Previously, I was not interested in Indian culture. Therefore, I did not know that a saree is not the only traditional outfit. In Haryana, women are rarely seen in a saree on a weekday. Rather, it is festive clothing. In everyday life, I saw only women in salvar-kameez and dupatta. Salvar-kameez means “pants and shirt”. In fact, a kameez shirt is most often a beautiful dress just above the knee, with different types of necklines and sleeve length, decorated with embroidery and gold threads. It is worn with salwar, which are often the same color as the top, but there are also different colors, there are form-fitting, it all depends on the design. In stores, shalwar-kameez are sold in one set with a dupatta color in harmony with the outfit.

The most magical detail in Indian women’s clothing is dupatta. It creates a mysterious image of a woman, hides her face, protects from annoying glances and from the sun.

Dupatta is a long scarf of the finest fabric. Married women cover their heads with a dupatta, and unmarried girls fashionably oblige a scarf around their neck and chest.

I noticed that when a married woman sees a man older than her, she covers her face with a dupatta. In particular, my mother-in-law covered her face as soon as some grandfathers entered the house. At such moments she looked very feminine.

Fabrics in India are always of good quality. The production of fabrics there has been calculated for thousands of years, cotton has been used since the third millennium BC. In ancient times, people living in the territory of modern India discovered the special properties of plants that give different colors to fabrics. Since then, the paint has been used in the manufacture of fabrics. Thus, India became the first country on the planet where multicolored fabrics appeared. It is also known that in India men painted their beards in the most unexpected colors.

Salwar-kameez, or Punjabi Suite, which I bought on the second day of arrival in India, I chose myself. It was aquamarine, satin, chiffon and with gilded patterns sewn onto the fabric. Dupatta was the same color of chiffon.

In the village, men of different ages wear a white ensemble of a long shirt and pants.

In the cold weather in India, I saw a lot of men who walked wrapped in a blanket.

Urban youth most often dress in the same way as in the West.

The shops in Tohana sell all kinds of clothes: national outfits and fashionable dresses, tops and jeans. Compared to other countries, clothing in India is cheap, but the quality is at its best.

Footwear in India is also national and ordinary. In the village, people walk in shales, wear national shoes or European shoes embroidered with stones and rhinestones to celebrations.

My future husband in the heat and in the cold, at the wedding and the police wore tight sports sneakers, put on thick socks. When I offered to buy other shoes, he bought himself new sports sneakers, which differed from the previous ones only in the color of the laces. His friends who came to us were shod in good-quality men’s sandals and fashionable shoes.

Together with salwar-kameez, I bought gorgeous ballet shoes in the national Indian style, embroidered with gold rhinestones, through which colored threads were intertwined with snakes.

On the streets, you can see men with a beautiful turban on head.

I walked through the market and looked at the passers-by. I could not believe that I was in the real world. It seemed to me that I was in an oriental tale or on the set of a film.

I noticed that Indian people have rare beauty, delicate features, large eyes with infinitely long doll eyelashes.

In the village of Samain, I saw the stunning beauty of a woman of about fifty. She had huge emerald eyes framed by two-centimeter velvet eyelashes, olive skin color, and all facial features harmoniously combined with each other as if painted by a talented artist. On her head she carried a metal basin, not holding it with one hand. It was evident that she was engaged in physical labor, but even her tired look did not hide her natural beauty, but, on the contrary, emphasized.

Often I looked at my Dadi and admired her. A thin, toned face with large blue eyes and a straight nose. Grandma was already ninety years old. But the sculpture of her face has not changed since her youth. There were deep wrinkles on her face. And in the bottomless eyes, the naughty light of former youth played. Still, only the body is aging, and the soul remains forever at the age when the person loved the last time.

* * *

Before bed, I tactfully asked me to bring a sheet and a duvet cover. But Tenardieu said that they did not use sheets and duvet covers in the house.

He slept on a synthetic bedspread and covered himself with a thick blanket. All the guests visiting the house were lying on the same bedspread during the day or sitting with their feet.

The next day, the young man’s mother smiling brought me a beautiful sheet of yellow satin fabric with blue flowers and a golden pattern. But she said that they were not sleeping on this, but, on the contrary, they sometimes covered the bed for beauty during the daytime.

How did I suffer in my soul when guests came to the house and lay down on our pillows with head, and someone did not hesitate to fold unwashed feet. The fact is that there was no spare pillowcase either, and instead of a pillowcase, I laid out one of the new hand towels that I brought with me. But it was still unpleasant, and it seemed to me that then the pillow smelled of someone’s feet.

For many years, I did not wash by hand and did not wash the dishes with my hands, as I had a dishwasher and an automatic washing machine. In the house of my future husband, almost everything was done manually. Small things were washed right on the granite floor, soaping and beating on the floor.

The washing machine was semi-automatic and assumed a constant presence to drain and pour water into the tank, and then shift it to the centrifuge.

There was also no trash can in the house. After peeling vegetables, the peel was dumped in a corner of the kitchen, cigarette butts were thrown right there on the floor next to them. Then when cleaning the room it was all swept away in a heap, shifted to the basin. Basin put on his head and carried to the dump. The dump was spontaneously located. That is, at the end of our small street, one needs to go out onto a large road, cross it, and rubbish was thrown onto the side of the road. There were already piled mountains of garbage, and no one took them out for recycling. We did the house-keeping with my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law every day, so it was clean. I often saw the old grandmother in some kind of homework, such as cleaning vegetables or sweeping the floor.

In India, you will rarely find garbage bins. The local population throws small rubbish everywhere, but not near their home. Large waste is carried to an arbitrary landfill, which, as a rule, is located every 500 meters. But in Indian houses, cleanliness is impeccable, even the poor wives have dusty clay floors in dugouts for days on end.

Drainage was also absent. In front of our house, the pavement was dismantled, and the car was pumping waste from the pit. At such moments, you begin to appreciate what you have not noticed around you before – the livability and comfort of modern apartments.

In the kitchen, huge cockroaches constantly crawled out of the pipe into the sink. I have never seen such big ones before. Each cockroach was four centimeters. There were also ordinary small cockroaches.

The first time I saw them was when I brewed tea in an aluminum scoop on the stove. My future husband was standing nearby. Then he suddenly said:

– Next to you crawling cockroach.

For fear, I screamed so loudly that people could hear me in the next village. I jumped onto the back of the young man and hung on it, continuing to scream with fear.

His father entered the kitchen, frowned and asked:

– What happened?

– She saw a cockroach.

He looked at me, laughed, and left.

Much to my surprise, I learned that my future husband was not at all afraid of cockroaches. Not even the slightest hostility to them.

– So what if cockroaches. They are also living beings. As a child, we even played with them, planted them in our palms, he said good-naturedly and smiled, as if recalling his childhood friends.

* * *

In the evening, I asked the young man and his family to come down. I said that I prepared something interesting for them.

Then they came into the room and sat around the table. I laid out a gift for a gift, brought from Moscow, and presented them to each family member.

When I gave my mother-in-law bracelets, contempt flashed in her huge tarry-black eyes. On the face of my future husband was a painful disappointment.

Immediately after the parents left the room, the young man arrogantly stated that the Italian dress, which I brought to his niece, he can buy from a flea market for a hundred rupees, but not for many thousands, and all the other gifts are cheap.

Then, squinting, he told me:

– You don’t seem to have money for a study in the USA. On what money were you going to go to America?

– What do you mean? Why are you talking about this now?

– Well, once you told me about the plan to study in the West. I thought there would be such a rich woman.

I said nothing and did not answer him.

The only person who showed respect was his father. He thanked me and proudly wore watches on his hand for several days; I was very pleased to see it. After all, the watches were good.

* * *

In those days I met my husband’s second cousin named Kamlesh. It was an educated thirty-year-old married woman. She came to her native village to her parents from another city, where she lived with a rich husband and children. She was happy in her marriage. She and her husband had two children – a boy and a girl. Among all the relatives of my future husband, Kamlesh was the most conscious.

She did not communicate with relatives of my husband and himself. In a large family of my father-in-law, many relatives did not speak among themselves for many years. But in those days she broke this rule.

A few years ago, a relative of my husband committed a misdeed connected with a girl. After that, the whole family became an outcast in their own society.

Once we sat with Kamlesh on the couch and chatted nicely. Then she told me:

– Now everything depends on him. If he wants, he will make a big wedding in a restaurant.

But the young man did not want to do anything. He only said that he had no money. And besides, he said I did not bring a dowry to their house, and this was important for him.

I actually had a dowry. But did it really matter, if everything turned out this way? So I said nothing.

And the next day I, my future husband, his father, sister and child got into the car of his friend Mandip – an intelligent young man and went to the regional center – Tohana.

Right at the bus stop in Tohana, there was a small, cute Hindu temple of white marble. We got out of the car and headed towards the temple.

Bus stops in India are equipped with comfortable, wide benches, some with backs, some without backs. Nearby you can find a public restroom. Not far from the benches there are trade shops, where right in the open air in large cauldrons they fry delicious dough products, for example, samosa. Other products are also tasty, but I do not know their names. Directly behind the shop, there is a small room with tables and benches, there is also a refrigerator with drinks. Travelers sit in the cool at the tables and eat the delicacies they just bought from disposable plates, seasoning them with ketchup.

* * *

The Hindu temple is a separate world, an amazingly beautiful architectural ensemble of marble, granite, limestone, and stone. Even the smallest temple in some lost Indian village is built as a small copy of its grandiose original with the repetition of all the necessary elements of style, with statues of Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva, Ganesh, Kali. In a different way, the statues of the Indian gods are called murti, that is, the “material form of God”, otherwise it can be expressed by the word “idol”. During the installation of the statue, the clergy from the highest caste of the Indian society, the Brahmans, conduct a special pran-pratistha ceremony, during which they ask God to incarnate in this statue. Every detail of the statue, every attribute of it has a specific meaning. For example, the crescent moon in the hair of Lord Shiva is a vessel with the nectar of immortality, it symbolizes control over the mind.

In Hinduism, the spiritual principle is called Brahman. Brahman is the absolute beginning of everything existing in the universe, it is neither good nor bad, it is impassive, infinite and unchanging. It is nirgunam or qualityless. Brahman consists of three gods – Brahma-forces, which creates, Vishnu-forces, which protects, Shiva-forces, which destroys.

You enter the Hindu temple and walk on cool, white, pure marble, walk towards a smiling Indian god and smile at him too, the sweet aroma of Indian incense hangs in the air. The atmosphere of goodness, love envelops like a cloud, and your heart thaws, everything that is outside of the temple is forgotten. Then comes the understanding that you are alone with this Earth with God, that you come into this light alone and live alone, and around you only him, God, exposed in the bodies of people, phenomena and events. It takes the form of different people and circumstances, and each time it asks you its own questions.

According to Indian philosophy, the soul is ignorant. It will be reborn again and again, participating in the cycle of life and death, which is called the “wheel of the Sansara”, until it knows the truth. One soul in every life is born in different bodies – it can be a microbe, an insect, an animal, a man, at the end of rebirth a pure soul becomes a part of Brahma. In the process of circulation, the soul goes to purgatory, where it is to redeem sins for the acts committed, or, on the contrary, it finds peace for good deeds in life.

* * *

So, we went to the temple. My future husband’s sister and I stayed inside, and he and his father left after talking with the temple attendant. I and his sister and her child sat for a long time on a clean white marble floor.

What we did and why we sat there, I did not understand, there was no one to ask, his sister did not know English, except for some well-known words, and I did not know Hindi to ask her. From time to time we smiled sweetly at each other and looked at each other sympathetically, complaining about the incredible heat. A fan was driving hot air. They brought me a glass of fresh juice, which I drank with pleasure. A cool stream of cold drink was most welcome.

In India, they make juice right in front of a client. There is a small shop on the street with ladles and a juicer like a meat grinder, near the shop there are a lot of fruits. The shop assistant immediately prepares a juice from any fruit you like.

Two hours passed, and then a young man came with his father. I was asked to go to the altar. The priest hung us on the neck in a flower garland and said something in Hindi. Then each of us put a spot on the forehead with red paint. I thought it was some kind of preliminary proceedings before the wedding, because in weddings usually there are many guests in fancy dresses. But we were alone.

We moved away from the altar, and Tenardieu with disgust wiped off the red spot on his forehead, fearing that anyone could see him.

– Now everyone thinks you forced me to marry you, wipe off the paint from your forehead too, – he hissed viciously.

– What?

– I just got married to you. – He answered rudely, turned around and left the temple.

When we left the temple and got into the car, a friend of my husband, Mandip, congratulated us and said that now we were a couple.

In the evening, my newly-made husband bought a bottle of cheap wine and samosa. Samosa is like our modified samsa, just not flat, and instead of meat, there are vegetables inside.

My mother-in-law, who was radically opposed to our marriage, never for a second left us alone, and my husband’s attitude towards me always changed to a sharply negative one at her presence.

I will make a short digression and describe my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law, according to my calculations, was eight to nine years older than me, and my father-in-law was exactly ten years older than me. My husband was ten years younger than me. Mother-in-law was about forty two years old, but she looked like fifty. She did not study anywhere except in several classes of school.

Her face which used to be fresh and pretty years ago, her huge, shiny, sapphire-like eyes framed by long, terry, fan-shaped eyelashes was wrinkled, and once the lacquer-black thick hair was almost all sparse and gray. When she was angry, she was distinguished by almost bestial rudeness in behavior and forced loud laughter. She wore salvar-kameez and she covered her head with a translucent dupatta fabric, as befits all married women. Her right shoulder was always noticeable below the left because of hard work. She almost always wore the same clothes as it is normal in villages all over the world. On a thin, wrinkled neck, she wore a gold pendant on a black rope; in her ears, she wore small gold hoop earrings. As for the point on the forehead, my dear mother-in-law drew it to herself only when she went to the city to the bazaar. She had one trait that gave her charm: when she was in my presence quarreling with someone and screaming, making scary eyes, at the same time she laughed with a coquettish, unnatural laugh.

So she never left us alone. And on our wedding day, it was the same. The three of us sat in the bedroom on our bed – me, Tenardieu and his mother. It was late, but she did not leave. They talked about something in Hindi, it even seemed to me that they were cursing, trying not to show it.

We did not celebrate this event in the restaurant. There was nothing festive – neither guests, nor a beautiful sari, nor gold jewelry, nor a honeymoon. I got married in the marine blue Punjabi suite I bought when I came to India. And instead of the restaurant, Tenardieu bought cheap wine with samosa, and so we were going to celebrate together. And even this mother-in-law did not allow us to do.

– Mom, go to your room, we just got married, let us sit together and celebrate the wedding, said my newly-made husband.

– I’m not going anywhere, – his mother replied and looked at me viciously at me.

– Go, I said, – he insisted, and my mother-in-law eventually left, so we were left alone and sat silently.

My mother-in-law went and the husband poured the wine into glasses. We sat for a while and went to bed.

Night covered the village with a heavy veil. A minute ago, the voices of passers-by were heard on the street, an angry dog barking could be heard from afar, and suddenly everything died down at once.

Initially, Tenardieu quarreled with his mother and her relatives, stood up for me. He even quarreled once on the street with my mother-in-law’s sister and her family, who lived next door, and told me:

– I quarreled today with the whole family. Do not betray me ever.

– I promise.

But over time, he went over to the side of his own mother, who hated me and began to resemble a tyrant feudal, who had only me in submission. He slandered me at any suitable moment when I was not around. He came to the bedroom and tormented me with his sullen silence.

I understood that his mother was discussing me with him. What he said to me after talking with her was disgusting.

“You have the face of a person one can’t trust. I will not go with you alone for the honeymoon. I’m afraid of you. You look like a Chinese woman. Mom is afraid to let me go with you. What if you are an agent from China?”

I laughed in response. I was invited to a man, and he himself was scared. I thought it was a bad joke. The young man kept saying the same thing.

– I do not trust you. Mom says I’m too young, I’m younger than you and married being a virgin to you.

– Is it you a virgin? You tell this fairytale to your mom. And I already know all the stories about you. You yourself told me everything. That’s it, tomorrow I’m leaving. Stay with your mom.

– Leave. Take a suitcase and go on foot, if you know where to go. I will not give you a car.

– You know perfectly well that I cannot leave without your help. Take me to the airport, please.

– But it is you who wants to leave. Why should I help you?

Then he dissuaded me from leaving. As it later turned out, he was afraid that the neighbors would laugh at him.

* * *

India is a country, only one-third of which is visible to the ordinary human eye. The rest of the country is invisible. However, the indigenous population is aware of its existence. Hence, many rituals, prayers, mantras, temples, priests. There are a lot of different strange events happening on Indian soil – I don’t know what kind of power is behind these events. The priests say that India comes into the life of a certain person for one mystical reason known to her. Also, the priests add that if India does not come to a person, means the person is not ready for this yet.

If India loves the person, then it gives him a sacred knowledge. A person is endowed with a special gift. Many Indians have innate abilities for hypnosis and magic, are able to predict the future, they see prophetic dreams.

Once I noticed after myself that for some time after arriving in India I began to have dreams that came true in three to five days. There was nothing terrible in these dreams; I just saw in a dream some situations that in a few days came true.

The Indian people have their little secrets. So, my mother-in-law, before eating sweets for some reason, pinched a small piece from them and threw it somewhere to the side. Only then she began to eat treats. I don’t know why she did it; I didn’t see dogs and cats next to her.

In India there is polytheism. Most of all I like the story of the god Ganesh. Ganesh is the son of the gods Shiva and Parvathi, who was born with a human body and head. The god Shani looked at the boy, and the child’s head burned. Then the god Shiva added to the baby the head of an elephant – the first animal encountered by the servants.

He is also called Shri Ganesh. Sri is a respectful prefix.

God Ganesh, kind and just, helps travelers and those who love to gain knowledge. Thus, this god is closer to me than all the other Indian gods.

The god Ganesh, who has the head of an elephant and the body of a man, pray as follows: “Om gam ganapataye namaha”. This mantra removes obstacles to a person. The first sound of the mantra “Om” – is the sound that first appeared in the newly created Universe.

* * *

Since we got married, I was supposed to wear Indian clothes, not European ones. Now I had to cover my head with a dupatta and draw a point on my forehead. In the morning I applied a red strip on the central hair part and draw a point on my forehead – bindi. The point in the forehead reminded me of the sunset of red Indian sun. How beautiful it looks on the forehead of a married woman in India! It seems to illuminate the house and family with its warmth, love, and wisdom.

The mother-in-law said that I now could not wear European clothes and that I could not walk alone now when I want to, that if I go somewhere, and then only accompanied. She also, through her son, told me that I had to wash the floors and do the cleaning every day in the whole house, as well as walk on the field and pick cotton by hands.

I also bought a special pencil and bottle with a red composition and tassel. It is exactly the same capacity as nail polish, but the consistency of the contents is different.

In India, there are many bindi options in various colors and sizes that stick to the skin and last until evening.