Page 3 of The Henna Artist

She chuckled. “So the Turkish fig leaves remain a mystery, as do your blue eyes and fair skin.”

In the ten years I’d been serving her, Parvati had not let this matter rest. India was a land of coal-black irises. Blue eyes demanded an explanation. Did I have a sordid past? A European father? Or, even worse, an Anglo-Indian mother? I was thirty years old, born during British rule and used to aspersions being cast on my parentage. I never let Parvati’s comments provoke me.

I draped a wet cloth over the henna paste and poured some clove oil from a bottle onto my palm. I rubbed my palms together to warm the oil, then reached for her hands to rub off the dried henna paste. “Consider,Ji, that an ancestor of mine might have been seduced by Marco Polo. Or Alexander the Great.” As I massaged her fingers, flakes of dried henna paste fell onto the towel below. The design I’d painted on her hands began to emerge. “Like you, I may have warrior blood running through my veins.”

“Oh, Lakshmi, be serious!” Her bell-shaped gold-and-pearl earrings danced merrily as she let out another laugh. Parvati and I were both born to the two highest Hindu castes, she a Kshatriya and me a Brahmin. But she could never bring herself to treat me as an equal because I touched the feet of ladies as I painted their henna. Feet were considered unclean, only to be handled by the low-caste Shudras. So even though her caste had relied on mine for centuries to educate their children and perform spiritual rites, in the eyes of Jaipur’s elite, I was now a fallen Brahmin.

But women like Parvati paid well. I gave no attention to her needling as I removed the last of the paste from her hands. Over time, I had saved a great deal and was so close to getting what I wanted—a house of my own. It would have marble floors to cool my feet after a day of crisscrossing the city on foot. As much running water as I wanted instead of begging my landlady to fill mymutki. A front door to which only I had the key. A house no one could force me to leave. At fifteen, I’d been turned out from my village to marry when my parents could no longer afford to feed me. NowIcould afford to feedthem, take care of them. They hadn’t responded to any of the letters or gifts of money I’d sent over the years, but surely they would change their minds and come to Jaipur now that I was offering them a bed in my very own home? My parents would finally see that everything had turned out all right. Until we were reunited, I would keep my pride in check. Hadn’t Gandhi-jisaid,An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?

The sound of breaking glass startled us. I watched a cricket ball roll across the carpet and come to rest in front of the divan. A moment later, Ravi, Parvati’s older son, walked through the veranda doors, bringing with him the November chill.

“Bheta!Close that door at once!”

Ravi grinned. “I pitched a burner and Govind wasn’t ready for it.” He spotted the ball near the divan and scooped it up.

“He’s so much younger than you are, Ravi.” Parvati was indulgent with her sons, especially with the younger boy, Govind, the child who in her opinion was surely the product of my henna applications (I had done nothing to discourage that notion).

Since I’d last seen him, Ravi had grown taller and broader across the shoulders. His square chin and jaw, so much like his father’s, were now shadowed. He must have started shaving. With the rosy complexion and long eyelashes he had inherited from his mother, he was almost pretty.

He tossed the ball in the air, and caught it, with one hand behind his back. “Is there tea?” It could have been his father speaking—so alike was their boarding-school English.

Parvati rang the silver bell she kept next to the divan. “You and Govind take yours on the lawn. And tell thechowkidarwe need a glass-wallato replace the pane.”

Ravi grinned at us, winking at me on his way out. He closed the door so carelessly another shard of glass fell out. I watched him jog gracefully across the lawn. Three gardeners, their heads wrapped in mufflers, were weeding, watering and trimming hibiscus shrubs and sweet honeysuckle vines in the back garden.

Ravi’s appearance was the perfect segue to what I’d come here to accomplish. Still, I needed to move forward cautiously.

“Home from boarding school?”

“Hahn.I wanted Ravi to help me cut the ribbon on the newgymkhana. You know Nehru-ji—how he wants to modernize India.” She sighed and laid her head against the cushion, as if she were besieged by daily calls from the prime minister. For all I knew, she was.

Lala entered with a silver tea tray. While I took out the savories I had cooked especially for Parvati from a tiffin, I heard her say to the older woman, “Did I not tell you to send her away?” Her voice was reproachful.

The servant put her hands together in prayer, touching them to her lips. “My niece has nowhere to go. I am her only family now. Please,Ji. We are at your mercy. Won’t you reconsider?”

I had never seen Lala so distressed. I turned away, afraid she was about to drop to her knees. A shrine for Lord Ganesh sat on a small table beside the four-poster bed. A garland of gardenias and another oftulsileaves were draped around the statue, in front of which adiyaburned. As modern as she liked to portray herself, Parvati spent every morning praying to the gods. I used to pray to my namesake, Lakshmi, the Goddess of Beauty and Wealth. Maa loved reciting the story of the Brahmin farmer who offered his scythe, his sole possession, to the goddess. In gratitude, she gave the farmer a magic basket that produced food any time he desired. But that was only a story, as true as any other Maa told and, at seventeen, I turned my back on the gods, just as now I turned away from Ganesh’s shrine.

Parvati was still addressing Lala. “I wouldn’t want to lose you, too, Lala. See that the girl is gone today.” She glared at Lala until the servant dropped her gaze, her shoulders drooping.

I watched Lala leave the room, She did not look up. I wondered what Lala’s niece had done to make her mistress so angry.

Parvati reached for her cup and saucer, a signal for me to pick up my own. The tea set was the kind the English loved, depicting women in corseted gowns, men in pantaloons, curly-haired girls in frocks. Before independence, these objects had signified my ladies’ admiration for the British. Now, they signified their scorn. My ladies had changed nothing but the reasons for their pretense. If I had learned anything from them, it was this: only a fool lives in water and remains an enemy of the crocodile.

I took a sip of tea and raised my eyebrows. “Your son has grown into a handsome young man.”

“Unlike the Rao boy who thinks he’s the RajasthaniDevdas.”

Parvati, like my other ladies, said things to me she would never have said to one of her peers. I was childless and, therefore, a subject of pity, someone to whom my ladies could feel superior. At thirty, I was neither a foolish girl nor a gossipy matron. My ladies had long assumed my husband had abandoned me—an assumption I’d taken no trouble to contradict. I still wore the vermillionbindion my forehead, announcing to the world that I was married. Without this assortment of credentials, I would never have been allowed into the confidence of my ladies, or into bedrooms like the one I found myself in now, my feet resting on pink Salumbar marble, my mistress seated next to me on a rosewood divan.

I took another sip of my chai. “Finding a perfect match for such a perfect son! I certainly don’t envy you.”

“He’s only seventeen. At twelve, I lost him to the Mayo School. A year from now, I’ll lose him once again to Oxford. Losing him to a wife? I can’t bear to think about that now.”

I adjusted my sari. “That’s smart of you. The Dutts, I fear, may have been in too much of a hurry.”

I caught the sparkle in her eye.

“Meaning?”

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