Free Of Marriageable Age by Sharon Maas Page B

Hindus cared to celebrate. (Mr Purushottama also bought a mosque for the Muslims, but Saroj didn't know a thing about that.)
    The Purushottama Temple was open to Hindus of every variety. Upstairs, in the house, was a puja room for Shiva worshippers, and one for Krishna worshippers; Rama, Kali, Hanuman, Ganesh, Parvati and Lakshmi each had a shrine where worshippers could gather at any time of day or night. Each room was a snug little refuge, complete with carpets and wall hangings from India and pictures of the various deities and decorated with brass ornaments polished and shining. The rooms were usually darkened, the louvres shut, the air thick with the heavy perfume of roses, jasmine, burned ghee and incense. Little oil lamps burned on every shrine, their flames unflickering in the half-light and surrounded with blue-and-golden haloes. At religious functions the entire temple swarmed with Indians. The lattice work was hung with garlands of marigolds; hibiscus blossoms were stuck between the wooden laths and the very air tingled with festivity.
    Sometimes Ma took them all for puja to the Shiva shrine. On the weekends Baba liked the whole family — relatives near and far — to put in an appearance, all spick and span: men and boys in immaculate white and crisply ironed kurta pyjamas, women and girls in their brightest shiniest saris and skirts.
    As a small child Saroj had actually liked the Purushottama Temple. It seemed a place of secrets and stories, full of deep mysteries, an exciting, exotic world aeons apart from reality. She had loved the colours and smells, the veiled idols behind thick curtains, the chanting and the singing and the atmosphere of otherworldy, ethereal ecstasy. All that changed abruptly when she reached the age of reason. Now she found the temple a reservoir of superstition. She still had to go, on Baba's command, but it was with an armoured heart and a cynical mind. Idolatry! Humbug! With turned up nose and slightly curled-up lips she sat through hours of pujas and kirtans ; her hands might meet in assumed reverence, her lips might utter the prescribed responses. But inside she knew it was all a lie. It was a world of make-believe for adults.
    And Ma was a part of this world that defied all reason.
    A T THIRTEEN , Saroj could hardly remember the time when Ma and she had been almost one entity — a time before thought, when being alive was knowing Ma's presence as a warm, downy nest. Ma, all luminous eyes and a smile that embraced you. A time when she had worshipped Ma, as all children worship their mothers. Doesn't every mother seem like God to her child, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-forgiving? Ma, to whom the butterflies came, who spoke to the roses and brought them to bloom. All powerful. Ma could summon the sunshine and dispel clouds. The four-armed Goddess Parvati on her celestial throne.
    But little girls grow up. They learn to think and reason, their horizon expands, their vision changes focus. They go to school, they read books, and newspapers. Their minds bounce free, Mother's halo fades, two of her arms drop off and she shrinks to her true, human and fallible size.
    Saroj now saw Ma as what she always had been: an excellent cook, a conscientious housekeeper, a devoted mother, a dutiful wife, a fervent Hindu. A typical Indian housewife, docile, subservient. Loving, good and strong; strong in the sense that all mothers are strong for their children, but nevertheless an impotent spirit in the background, coyed and cringing under Baba's foot. Baba's rule was despotic, his rule was law, and no-one dared disobey, least of all Ma.
    Ma, hanging on to the strange archaic customs she'd brought from the land of her ancestors, the silent little woman steeped in tradition, living in a world light-years away from reality, the centre of whose universe was the Purushottama Temple, a museum of dead stone idols.
    'If I can talk to her, you can,' Ganesh claimed. 'It's not that difficult. Ma knows more about