Why Don’t You Marry Me?

Telugu: Bharago

While middleclass life can be dubbed as an ordeal for survival with convenient compromises, it brings up some strange situations where even a compromise is elusive. Bhamidipati Rama Gopalam, a consummate artist who deftly juxtaposes seriousness with fun, tragedy with comedy, explores one such situation in this story and produces a feeling of ‘ah’ with an O. Henry-like twist in the end. My uncle RS Krishna Moorthy used to say that every time he read the story it brought tears in his eyes. I am sure a thin film blears your eye in the end.

“Why don’t you marry me, Subrao?”

That was for one hundred and twenty-first time for Kamla Menon to ask the question ever so sweetly. But it sounded harsh to the ears of Subba Rao. He vented his anger by banging the letter he received from home on the floor in disgust.

Kamla Memon chuckled as if she had understood that the reason for his disgust was ‘not for what she had said but for something else.’  It was Subba Rao’s turn to explain his gesture. Lest she should mistake it was directed towards her, he immediately put on a smiling face and asked her, “Just a minute please. You may turn on the radio if you like,” he said and went in.

Kamla Menon was good to look at. She was a coquettish Malayali, adept in everything she did, from the way she dressed up, applied bindis on her forehead or wore a hairstyle, never repeating herself, to moving with effortless and unreserved ease.

“Why don’t you marry me? Why don’t you? Me/” was her refrain of late.

My god!

Though her attack was more direct of late, it used to be subtle initially like, “What Subrao? You are twenty-nine. Why don’t you marry somebody?”

Well, when a man gets past twenty-nine and remains a bachelor, there will be umpteen people, not only in a metro like Calcutta but in a small town like Kakinada as well, who would accost him saying “Why don’t you marry?”

However, that question would be preceded by a beautiful introduction and camouflaged in an imperceptible veil. It won’t taste like this tart either. Like the famous Telugu New Year hotchpotch, it would be tantalizingly sweet and acrid at the same time. It would also generate some lively and graceful exchange of words. And to relieve the victim of the pain of ‘not having married yet’ there would be suitable dispensation of humor in doses like the homeopathic globules. But how could anybody expect from this Kamla Menon, a Malayali, an Asst. Secretary of Baker & Baker Company, born in Calicut but growing, nay outgrown, in Calcutta match the ladies of Kakinada in their sweet sonorous expression? The question was as tart today as it was two years before when she asked for the first time. He wanted to tell the same on her face. But…

He lighted the pressure stove and put some water in a vessel to boil. By the time he returned from bathroom refreshing himself, Kamla Menon was reading newspaper, resting comfortably on the cot, leaning on the pillow turning it vertically behind. Sensing the sound of his footsteps, she said entrancingly, “I don’t want that wretched tea, Mr. Subrao.”

Poor fellow, even Kamla Menon’s lively talk sounds odd and harsh to Subba Rao.

She would call him ‘Subrao,’ but he would insist on calling him ‘Subba Rao.’ Then she would call him ‘Brav.’ He would hang up. Similarly, whenever he called her ‘Kamala Menon,’ she would insist addressing her as ‘Kamla Menon’ and if it came to that she would ask him to address as ‘Komla.’

“I am not a child to call you by pet names like ‘Kamla and Komla’” he said to her once. “Do you think I am Pootana to mistake a vicenarian, five feet nine inches tall and eighteen inches wide, and drawing eight hundred rupees per month like you – to be a child?” She replied.

“Ok. Let me make coffee instead of tea,” he proposed.

“Let me make coffee,” she imitated him, with a violent seductive laughter.

“How many times should I remind you not to get on to the cot without washing your feet?” He wanted to tell her, but the words subsided in his mind. He went to her gently and pleaded, “Please get up once. I am sorry. I wanted to change the bedsheet for the last two days but went on postponing. It is the way a bachelor’s room will be,” he said mincing words and with a halfhearted smile.

“Ha…ha…ha…the question and the answer!”  Kamla laughed once again.

‘Incorrigible!’ he thought within.

‘The moment she set her eyes on me, I was gone,’ Subba Rao deeply grieved. When Narayana Goswamy introduced her to him, he was more informal with her considering she was a secretary and not a typist or a clerk. That was how he ensnared himself. He got so accustomed to everyday meetings and gossiping together that he was not himself when she could not find time to meet or talk to him. The story might not have progressed thus far had he not offered her lift in his taxi that day when she was desperately waiting for a taxi after watching a late-night movie. After a few days he might have excused himself bidding her goodbye on the pretext of their nature of work.

But things moved fast. They started exchanging house visits, offering coffee and tea, introducing one another to their friends, and moving together everywhere as if they were on a publicity campaign, and escorting one another to their rooms. ‘Maybe she was entertaining other ideas about furthering the friendship,’ he thought.

“Where is the letter from, Subrao?” Kamla Menon had asked, sipping the coffee and with the liberty seldom seen from even a wife.

“Someone… why?”

“From my parents,” he said on second thoughts. His attempt to conceal his disappointment in his face of not finding what he wanted therein had been an utter flop.

“You won’t get this angry if they just asked you to send money?” she reasoned reading his mind.

This Kamala Menon is slowly interfering with his personal matters. She could guess that I wouldn’t get angry if they had just asked me to send money. She was able to read my emotions.

It was so true. The frequency of letters was also like that. There won’t be any letters in the middle of the month. They always come in the last week of the month. Almost two to three days before he gets his salary.

He received almost forty letters of that kind. And the contents of the letters followed the same template.

He could read the contents of the letters he would receive in the last week of any month without having to open them. Sometimes, he would be spared even of that trouble, for he would receive only Postcards instead of Inland letters.

“Daddy! Please don’t write Postcards,” he would say to his father. “My boy! I am taking every precaution to drop the postcard in the Redbox personally and away from the prying eyes of people who could read Telugu. Among so many Bengalis around you who cares for a letter written in Telugu. That’s why Postcard is a safe bet. Inland letters are a waste of money. Besides, it attracts unnecessary attention and people might even be tempted to open it,” he would reply as he were a champion of frugality. “Besides, what are the secret matters we are going to exchange?” he would reason.

Yes, there won’t be any secrets.

For that matter, there won’t be anything in them.

Beginning with ‘safe here and hope the same with you,’ they end up everything was not good. “I am not keeping good health. I am getting bouts of cough frequently. Your mother had readings of high blood pressure twice this month. Your younger brother got injured playing football. He had deep wounds on his forearm and kneecap. We are searching for good bridegrooms for your two sisters. Three people visited our house to see Vasanta this month. All three liked her but I am afraid we cannot match them in their economic status.” They go this way for long. But the last lines would be unambiguously clear specifying the amount of money he had to send. The tone of command would be concealed behind a smack of request.

He set foot in Calcutta when he was twenty-six to join this job. So long as he was in Kakinada, he could not secure a job anywhere, including the state government. If he could secure one, he would be living happily amidst them and could have avoided these letters, this wretched loneliness. He could have evaded the agony of Kamala Menon’s enquiries and solicitations. He might have married some girl by now and been a great prop to his sisters.

He just dodged marriage taking it was too early to marry.

But things had changed a lot now.

None of his family members care how he was, whether he was taking meals on time, how he was managing his laundry, who was setting up his bed, helping with Amrutanjan pain balm when he was suffering from headache, with whom he shared his pains and pleasures, or who was providing an outlet for his emotional disturbances watching some wonderful things in the city. It was two years since he last visited home.

Of course, it was true! Last time when he went home, his mother appealed to him four or five times. “Son! Extend your leave by one or two months. We can look for a bride. We can find some auspicious time for the marriage. You can go to your place with the bride,” she pleaded. Had he obeyed his mother he might have found a suitable bride and been married by now.

Things turned bad when he went to a second show cinema that night. He made plans to go to Pithapuram the following day, to meet his friend Sridhar Rao, and to make a proposal to marry his sister Padmaja and to meet Padmaja privately and to make a proposal to her. And he roamed in high spirits imagining his life with Padmaja and entered the theatre.

To his surprise, Padmaja was sitting next to him in the theatre. She greeted him heartily saying, “I am so happy to see you.” He also felt equally delighted that half minute. But her next sentence exploded like a volcano spewing lava that engulfed him. “Look here. This is my husband Vidya Sagar, MA. He is working as a lecturer here. Our friendship is forty-one days old today,” she said with a pristine smile introducing the two. He was tempted to say if she had already started counting her friendship with him in days but refrained. The words he wanted to say sank in his gullet. The white cinemascope silver screen, the comfortable dim-lights on the ceiling overhead, she looked black, Padmaja’s pearl-white teeth and the endless future ahead — all looked dark, dim, and gloomy and seemed to sneer at him. It did not strike him immediately how to brave the setback. Dismissing all plans to Pithapuram, he got into the Madras Mail the next day.

“Why don’t you marry a beautiful lady?” — save Kamala Menon, nobody would ask him this these days. But this Kamala Menon— would laugh, greet, and jest with him, follow him to market and showrooms, for cinemas and evenings out. Did she have any grace or elegance? Could she prepare a delicious meal? She was but a lazy bum who would sit cross-legged on the cot leisurely sipping the coffee prepared by him. She did not have the decency to wash the cup at put it in the proper place. Once he bought a chaplet for her. “Um! I can’t set it in my tresses. Please do it yourself,” she said coquettishly. Well, to look for grace in it, it would require a lot of condescension.

Kamla Menon who was reading the newspaper sipping the coffee till then suddenly stopped both and sat upright. Pointing her finger on an advertisement in the paper she declared, “I will apply for this!”   Immediately she picked up a pen and notebook, scribbled the details mentioned therein, checked her notes with the details mentioned in the paper once again, and then put two tick marks on the ad in the paper.

‘Silly goose! Greedy still! Already drawing five hundred per month from Baker and Baker Pharma company doing nothing but just hanging around dangling her vanity bag but is not satisfied! She wants a better job with better pay!’  Subba Rao cursed her within, with a tinge of jealousy.

“So, good night, Subrao!” Kamala Menon got up to leave.

‘Good riddance!’ thought Subba Rao within, but said, “You made up your mind to leave! You will not wait even if I ask you to remain. Besides, you also seem to have found a new opening in another company. Should you get selected, you will even bid goodbye to Baker and Baker,” said Subba Rao.

Kamala Menon got up chuckling. While it irritates Subba Rao to watch her when she chuckles shaking her whole body, but subconsciously, he desires to see Kamala Menon laughing that way.

“Just go through the ad. It is not for me alone,” she said with a teasing laugh and walked out.

Subba Rao looked at the ad casually in his bid to make a guess about the company. Some companies were smart enough to place their ads trying to conceal their identity, but it was seldom difficult to identify the company. He looked at the paper.

He was shocked!

It was a matrimonial column seeking a bride.

It read: “Need a beautiful Malayali girl prepared to live on Calcutta for a good looking, well- bread and decently employed twenty-eight-year-old boy. The girl must be good at English and aged between twenty-two to thirty years. Apply with a recent photograph.”

Subba Rao read and re-read it.

Kamla Menon was very shrewd. If she could not get her things done by fair means, she could get them done by deception. I was mistaken that she was eyeing for me! The moment she saw an eligible Malayali bachelor in the paper, she did not wait for a minute to fly off from here. I was terribly mistaken that I attracted her. What a goof-up! — Subba Rao was perplexed. While asking ‘Why don’t you marry me?’ on one side, her eyes were in search of a Malayali boy! How clever! How Cunning! How artful! ‘It was all because of my silence. She was desperate and disappointed at my continued indifference,’ reasoned Subba Rao within, regretfully.

Yes, when she had asked him at least a hundred times deliberately “Why don’t you marry me?”  What did she do? Did she ever say, “Let me think about it” at least once? He replied that they were divergent culturally. “This is cosmopolitan city. We are living in a cosmic age. While international relations were getting stronger by day, how come you entertain such narrow ideas?” She even tried to bully him. He never gave her the faintest hope. Having waited for a long time, she went in search of someone she liked. By tomorrow she would find him no matter where he was and would bring him her way. There was no doubt about that!

‘Let her go if she decides! Really good riddance!’   he concluded after a long reflection. But the very next moment he would be overwhelmed with the feeling that he was at fault for letting her slip away. There was some attraction he could not really make out what.

With all that, speaking to him about international relations and cosmopolitan way of life, she ran searching after a Malayali boy at the first opportunity! Was there a lesson for him to learn?

No?

Really?

Subba Rao pulled out a paper and pen. He drafted brief ad for three English dailies, available in Calcutta and, also popular in Andhra Pradesh.

***

“What did your boyfriend say?” Subba Rao asked Kamala Menon teasingly.

“Boyfriend? Who?” shot back Kamla Menon, with the speed of an echo.

“The one you found in the ad?”

“There is neither a boyfriend, nor a prospective husband.”

“Incredible! Then what prevented you from coming to my room for all these days? Who was it that you were going with?”

“Oh!” she chuckled in her inimitable style shaking all over her body. “Jealousy! They name is man! What a fall my country men!” she continued her laughter oblivious of his presence.

“Did he at least invite you for a cup of coffee?” Subba Rao enquired with seeming innocence, taking care not to betray the tenor behind his gibe.

“Idiot! Do you think I would go even if he had invited me? Mr. Subrao! Do you know? He was another CIA! My daddy said that such a scoundrel was never born in the whole Trivandrum district before!”

“Oh!”

Subba Rao tried hard to suppress his overwhelming pleasure. ‘Silly goose! A fitting rebuff! She deserves it!’ he thought within. “I must take her to my room, babble about international, cosmopolitan, cosmic nonsense and then finally tease, ‘Hey, baby! Then, why did you run with racehorse speed reading about a Malayali prospect?’”

“Then, come to my room. I will throw you a party!” he proposed.

“Party? What for?”

“Rejoice! You should have given me a party to avoid a sure disaster! Come on. Let’s go!” He almost dragged her to his room placing his arm around her waist. He would rarely do that.

***

Subba Rao went into the kitchen, lit the stove, and put some water for boiling.

Kamla Menon picked up a letter slipped through the letter box and was trying to make out where it was from by turning it back and forth.

“What’s that?” asked Subba Rao cheerfully.

“See it for yourself,” said Kamla Menon handing over the letter to him. The glow in her eyes betrayed her curiosity. That was a response from a daily. It was clearly mentioned on the top: With best compliments from such and such newspaper in response to the ad no. — placed on such and such date.

Subba Rao stole a glance at Kamala Menon.

Kamla Menon had long caught him stealing looks.

Holding back his delight at the threshold of his eyes itself and straining not to spill it over onto his lips as smile, Subba Rao sat on the space left over by Menon on the cot and carefully opened the letter.

“Just a minute. Help yourself with a chair and sit opposite me. This is not anything confidential. I will tell you everything,” he told her.

There was only a small cover inside.

What did it imply?

‘While he placed an ad in three English dailies… of the three crore Andhra readers, five crores to be realistic, he received one, just one response from a girl prepared to marry him! It meant that neither he, nor his position could attract but just one girl!’

Subba Rao was thoroughly disappointed!

What his father said was right: that Indira, daughter of Kameswara Rao and Girija, daughter of Veerabhadrayya, both, had turned down the proposal when they came to know that they had to live in Calcutta. It was also the reason the mediator Subrahmanya Sastry refused to look for a match for him!

He had already received letters the previous day from the other two dailies regretting that they had not received any responses to the ad placed in their paper.

Only this girl…

Who was she?

Subba Rao looked blankly into the eyes of Kamla Menon. She was laughing uncontrollably!

My God! Could this be her application!! May gods forbid!!!

Her looks seemed to convey, ‘What for the delay? Come on, open it.’

“Give it to me. I shall open it,” proposed Kamla Menon.

“Wait! Be patient!” said Subba Rao.

He opened it.

Subba Rao petrified!!!

The room, the cot, the cover in his hands, Kamla Menon … all seemed to revolve around him with infinite speed. He felt he was also whirling.

He felt he was losing consciousness. He felt the fan had broken loose and fallen on him.

‘I am a wretched person. I will have a miserable end.

‘These are my last moments of life. What a sin!’

What was there?

Those words…

Taking the form of a letter … was a death sentence to humanity.

He was the perpetrator of that.

An unparalleled sin.

“Sir,

“My name is Vasanta. My father’s name is Veerabhadra Rao. I passed School Final. I am attaching my photo herewith. I am twenty-four. Unable to meet the demands of dowry, my parents could not marry me off. I am prepared to live in Calcutta. My brother is in a prominent position there. He is a nice person. He is postponing his marriage because of us, two sisters. I provide his address below. If you can come to a prompt decision, you will be sparing us the trouble of eternally waiting for your response.

“Why don’t you marry me?

1. Vasanta”

“Why are you shivering, Subrao?” asked Kamla Menon anxiously.

There was no response.

She got up.

Still no response.

“Poor fellow! He is under emotional shock! He is sweating profusely.” Kamla Menon was concerned and turned on the fan to full speed.

“I have no tears to shed.”

“What did you say, Subrao?”

“There was no penance to my sin!” said Subba Rao, drying his eyes. “Is this my accomplishment for all their goodwill?”

“What exactly was there in the letter, Subrao? What is happening to you?”

He dropped the letter and the photo onto the bed. “It was an application from my sister.”

Subba Rao hid his face cupping his hands, with remorse.

Application was in English.

Kamla Menon immediately understood what was wrong. She looked in control of the situation temporarily, but she was also in shock.

She went in.

Water was boiling on the stove.

“Poor fellow!” pitied Kamla Menon.

She returned with two cups of coffee. Subba Rao was still reeling under the shock. She struggled hard to hand him over the coffee cup.

“Thank Heavens! Hard to imagine what might have happened had I not been here today!” she thought. For a moment, Greek tragedies flashed before her eyes scaring her out of her wits.

“How unfortunate! What a great tragedy! What kinds of shock our social system gives us!!” Kamla Menon tried to console Subba Rao, sharing his grief.

“Why don’t you marry me?”

It was Subba Rao’s turn to ask Kamla Menon.

*