THE PEN THAT THE NATION BENT ITS KNEE FOR.

“Kids, don’t touch anything. Everything here is a hundred years old. Too much history for you to meddle with.”

“Why is there a painting in this house? I thought he was a poet. And why does she look like that?”

She had her eyes closed, but the thoughts never stopped. Her memories rang back to the evening of aadi thirunaazh ( the beginning of the auspicious harvest month of aadi). He had waited for her at the steps of the mandapam, no more than 14 years of age, his eyes had crinkled with a smile when he looked at her. Her hands shook when he gave her the scroll, before she could thank him, she heard the Iyyer opening garba griham. She panicked and ran, but not without the scroll.

“What is he saying? He is against child marriage. What nonsense is he spewing at them? You are the one who proposed this and now your son is saying what? That he won’t come to the kovil tomorrow?”

Her father was shouting at the groom’s uncle while she slipped quietly into her room. She saw the turmeric plant tied to the door, guilt settled into the corners of her heart. Ammachi had asked her not to set foot outside the room. And she had met the groom. Ishwara!

She lit the lamp and opened the scroll. Clutching her sari in one hand and the scroll in the other, she knew. She just knew.

kanchani

Make it yours!

“Kanchani... it's been fourteen long years. How many more will you spend in this wretched old place?”

She didn’t reply, her smile did.

“Answer me. Will you? Why are you so adamant about not selling them?”

Kanchani had grown old in his house. Her childhood friend’s house. Kanchani’s eyes roamed the walls until she found it. In a red sari with a silambam in hand, she looked every bit the kanchani he had envisioned her as.

“I don’t look beautiful, do I? Is that why you asked me not to show this to anyone?”

He stopped chanting prayers to Saraswati and smiled at her.

“No. No, you don’t look beautiful in that.”

Her face fell at the blatant admission. She knew he only ever spoke the truth, as everyone in the village believed Saraswati rested on his tongue.

“You are fierce here.” His fingers pointed to her hands holding the silambam, “You are dauntless like Saraswati and Durge in one, and that to me is more than any beauty the human eye can see.”

“Look Kanchani, this has gone on for long enough. Sell the rights to the books to them. What do you hope to get by living in this god-awful place? Writing all those books against British babus, your husband made a mistake and you are bearing the brunt, barely getting by.”

Her gaze pored through, long and unrepentant. Whispers filled the place, women and men alike were appalled at her audacity, “Look at her, tattered clothes and all, she still lifts her eyes and speaks. No wonder men in the street look at her like that.”

Her heart reached out to that one memory from what felt like a long time ago,

“They will call me veshi if I walk like that. A girl from a good household shouldn’t lift her eyes in the street.”

“My respect lies in your gaze. Remember that, in case you lower it.”

“What do you say? They will pay 10,000 Rupees, enough for you to leave this .. hut and settle

somewhere more pleasant. I know Zamindar’s family, he wants a wife to take care of his 3 children, you are young and have no one. This will be a good opportunity, you won’t have to sleep hungry.”

Her words slashed through before the man had a breath,

“I hear those kids in the school sing and that is enough food for a day. Do you know what they sing?

They sing the same song Vanchinathan sang before those British dogs hanged him on the street. The song that my husband wrote. ”

“Yes, he made a mistake. His birth was his mistake. 30 years of his life for this Bhoomi. For the land that he called his mother. And on the 31st, his hands clutched the same soil while his soul was too pure to live among the men that betrayed him. His blood lives in this soil and his works, they are the same. I might wear torn clothes but my dignity hasn’t yet shredded enough for me to sell my husband’s blood to the monsters that won’t wait to tear my body once I die. You want to sell my husband’s words? You will have to snatch them from my hands as I die and sell them with my blood stains on the ink. No other way are you getting it while I still breathe.”

“That is Kannamma. Subramania Bharathi’s wife, the woman that Bharathi envisioned as his idol of a modern woman. Some 112 years ago.

And, she is the reason we still get to read his poetry for free, if left the villagers of that time, they were ready to sell the rights to the Britishers for money.”

“ Was Bharathi that great with his words? Why haven’t I heard anything about him?”

“His pen bent Curzon’s knee. But India has a way of forgetting benevolent debts. It forgot him

too.”

“How did she die?” The girl looked at Kanchani’s painting again.

“The way Bharathi’s Ideal woman would die in the real world. Of hunger.”