The Shrine

Mrs. Talsingh stooped down to sweep her patio with a bundle of dried leaves, taking great pleasure in both the swooshing, scraping sound and the slight ache in her lower back. After all, this was how Indian housewives had swept up since Indian women had first been allowed to join their men in the estate barracks in the old days of the Indenture in Trinidad—and, she was sure, this was how it was in India itself for all the glorious centuries of its civilization. She knew perfectly well that she was a bit of a joke around the village, whose other ladies had long since gone over to plastic brooms bought at the hardware store or even to strange plug-in devices that sucked up dust—and, no doubt, a multitude of tiny creatures whose souls were thus sacrificed in the name of progress. But she remained steadfast. “Is a li’l t’ing,” she would say in her weary but authoritative voice, “but is the li’l t’ings that does matter.” Housewives sacrificing tradition for the sake of their aching backs? It was indeed the edge of a slippery slope. What next? Abandoning the head scarf? Wearing slacks? Eating beef? Sad to say, there were others who did such things—and worse—and it probably all started when they gave up their good, old-fashioned leaf bundles. Her own daughters, Indra and Jana, far away in Canada, made her the butt of their jokes whenever they came home to visit. They had learned the proper technique of sweeping and taking care of a respectable house when they were girls, but God alone knew what they did in that strange, cold land to which their husbands had taken them. As for her daughter-in-law (whose name she adamantly refused to say aloud), well her stupid son Mohan was fully to blame, indulging her as he did in every whim that came into her head as a result of the American fashion magazines she was forever reading instead of taking care of her house and her children. No bundle of leaves for that awful girl—why, the lazy good-for-nothing hired a creole woman to come in to do her cooking and cleaning while she traipsed off to Port of Spain to have lunch at a tennis club, if you please, with her uppity friends! But this day Mrs. Talsingh's irritation with the new generation was short-lived because she had a greater, a higher purpose in mind. The night before, as she made her offerings to the household deities, she had resolved to carry out the last wish of her late husband. She has procrastinated too long, but now she would make amends by seeing to this business with firm dispatch. She finished her chores, bathed, and put on her best dress. As she brushed her long, still lustrous hair, she glanced at her wedding picture. Had it really been 60 years since she had come to Zenobia Village to marry Hari Talsingh? She had grown up in Banpore, not that far away, but well off the main road that led to the old sugar refinery, the usine. Hers had been an isolated childhood typical of girls in those days, and needless to say she had never so much as talked to a boy other than her brothers and cousins, nor had she so much as laid eyes on Hari Talsingh before the day her wedding was celebrated. Imagine what these young girls today would say if you told them they couldn't go to school or go around unchaperoned with their friends to movies and parties and that they had to get married at the age of 14 to some boy they had never even met! But it was better in the old days; she thought—marriage is too important to leave it to addled and naïve young people. She thought bitterly of the peculiar alliances made by her own children, whose folly she and her husband had been powerless to stop in the face of “modernity.” Well, things had worked out well enough. As she looked again at the old photo, she acknowledged that in the view of the community at large, she had gotten the better part of the bargain. The Talsinghs, while not rich, were certainly better off than her own folks. Hari's father was a foreman at the usine while her own father still labored in the fields cutting cane. The Talsinghs had a nice cement block house right on the main road while she had grown up in a thatch-roof cottage in a place that her own grandchildren mockingly referred to as “the boondocks.” And Hari himself was tall, fair, and quite handsome while she—she had no reason to deny it then or now—was short, dark, and plump. She never did figure out why the match had been made in the first place—her hateful mother-in-law never ceased tormenting her by announcing that it had all been a terrible mistake and that she would be sent packing should she commit the tiniest infraction of the old lady's arbitrary rules. And yet she was happy in her fashion. She enjoyed her children when they were young and although Hari spent a great deal of time at the rum shop and beat her for no particular reason whenever he got home, she really did not mind. She heeded the advice of one of her older sisters-in-law, to whom she had confided the first time he laid hands on her. “Silly girl,” Sita had said with a sigh, “is a good t’ing when a husban’ he beat you, else how you know he does care for you?” It was true—a husband who did not strive to keep his wife in line was a husband who could not be respected as a provider and householder of repute. A man who was not a big beater was no man at all, and what self-respecting woman would want a husband like that? Well, Mrs. Talsingh never had to worry—over the years Hari gave her ample evidence of his provident care. Now in his later years Hari had come under the sway of a charismatic pandit fresh from India itself. The holy man had somehow gotten Hari to give up drink and Hari indeed became something of a sadhu. After he retired from his own position at the usine just before it shut down for good, he spent most of his time studying the sacred books and going about in the company of the village Nawh who helped people set up their household pujas. Mrs. Talsingh was not entirely sure she liked this new, ostentatiously pious version of her husband, but in spite of what she had learned as a young bride, she had to admit that it was a relief to be free from his wrath. And since his death, she had felt a sense of freedom, the enjoyment of which she could never, would never acknowledge, least of all to herself. Shortly before his death, Hari had come up with his grand plan: he wanted to build a shrine on the property he had bought a few years before. The property adjoined the house, but had been given over to the growing of papayas. The extra income they made from selling the fruit was a welcome addition to his small pension, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to persuade one of her grandchildren to drive her to the Saturday farmers’ market up in Couva and the land was just going to waste in his opinion. In his advanced spiritual state he had convinced himself that the land had to be consecrated to holy purposes. As it happened, the Dookharine family, who had operated a once lavish shrine on their own property down the road, had given up that aspect of their good work. The Dookharines were by far the richest family in Zenobia and why they continued to live there no one could say. Mrs. Talsingh was convinced that they did so just so they could lord it over their neighbors, something it would have been more difficult to do had they moved to some fancy house far from the cane fields where their neighbors would have been uppity rich people just like themselves. In any case, the Dookharine shrine, dedicated to Hanuman, was long the focus of the village's ritual life. Unlike other families, who celebrated their pujas in the modest confines of their own houses, the Dookharines’ house was open to all, and their pujas were for decades the main events on Zenobia's social calendar. Everyone in the village was expected to attend, and all the women were expected to help with the cooking and serving. The Dookharines seemed to take it as their lordly due. But now the old man and the old lady were both dead and their children had moved away to the lavish quarters more in keeping with their station in life. They let the house out to rent and, of course, the renters—shiftless people of no standing whatsoever—could not be expected to maintain the shrine or keep up the annual round of ritual activity. And so Mr. Talsingh saw his opportunity. “Is a nice t’ing,” his wife agreed, “but is also a big headache, nuh. We bot’ getting’ old, and our children do not care for such t’ings. We do not need such a burden.” She meant, of course, that she did not need the burden, since it was obvious that all the tasks of upkeep would fall to her, while her husband sat discoursing on the scriptures with the pandits. But she made it seem as if the burden was one they would share. “No, no,” he insisted. “Is a work of charity. It will bring blessings on our family, on the whole village.” “No, mon,” she retorted. “Is just vanity. You just want people to t’ink you's like the Dookharines an’ bow an’ scrape to you.” She regretted her impertinence immediately and braced for the blow that would almost certainly have been her due in the old days. But Hari merely sighed in a forbearing, sadhu-like manner and replied, “We shall see.” She privately stuck to her opinion, but realized that his mind was made up. The new pandit from India agreed to officiate at all the ceremonies, a major coup. The local pandits were fine men, of course, but this one could recite endless stretches of the Ramayana in flawless Sanskrit, and he carried himself with a metropolitan elegance that no other religious figure in Trinidad could match. That he would agree to spend part of his time conducting pujas in a place like Zenobia was a boon that could hardly be ignored. Hari and the pandit even agreed that the shrine would be dedicated to Ganesh, the gentle elephant-headed god of wisdom and prudence, a fitting patron for two men so devoted to learning. They were also in agreement that the place would be a shrine like the one the Dookharines had supervised (albeit much finer) and not a formal mandir. Building such a temple would require the approval of the Sanantana Dharma Maha Sabha, and neither Hari nor the pandit wanted to deal with the high-handed councilors of the SDMS who would undoubtedly assume that they knew best and would take over the show and run it for their own purposes. Something that was technically a household shrine (albeit an exceptionally fine one, they kept reminding themselves) would be theirs to operate as they saw fit. “All right,” Mrs. Talsingh had said at last. “But how you go pay for this t’ing? To clear the land, to build the building—carpenters, painters, who knows what else? That sort of t’ing don't come cheap.” “Is true,” Hari agreed sadly. “It can't be any of these worthless local boys to do the work. We must have the finest workmen from San Fernando.” “Like I say: how you go pay?” “Ganesh will provide somehow,” was his response. Ganesh had not, however, seen fit to provide in the remaining years of Hari's life and after his death it seemed as if his project would be forgotten. The pandit came around every so often to tell her that even though he was accepting various commissions elsewhere, he still had an overpowering sense that building this shrine in Zenobia was something he was meant to participate in. She was always polite to him, of course, but she was careful to give him no indication of how, or even if the work was to be done. But now everything had changed. She had received what she was quite certain was a message from a transcendent place. Whether it was from Hari or from Ganesh himself she could not say, but as a woman of simple faith—the intricacies of the sacred scriptures meant nothing to her—she knew an inspiration from on high when she heard one. And she had definitely gotten the message that the shrine was to be built, and that the work must begin without further delay. And so she fixed her most elaborately embroidered head scarf and set off down the road to see the American. The American had been coming to Zenobia for many decades, since the days when he was a skinny, dark-haired boy who said he wanted to write a kind of book about the Indians in Trinidad and who even lived in the village for more than a year while he did it. He had, of course, caused a bit of a sensation. Most of the villagers had seen Americans—the ever-expanding new oil industry was of them to the in the years after But of them had wanted to live in a village like they make a to get a bit of what they but once they had they beat a to their on the other seemed really in all of things the villagers no could care their Now in those days it was for people to that the in Trinidad had from American seemed to that things had in some knew things about what people in India itself had been like before the he wanted to out what had over the It all seemed and he in the house of Mrs. Mrs. Talsingh's and good The were to be of almost for the young and so that he must be all And then he kept coming over the Now he was old and and far from and he could face to face with the village and important with and not at their and them Mrs. Talsingh had heard that the American was some at the of the up in but he was over in Zenobia to see old Mrs. Talsingh was to to him before he and she had heard the that he would be taking at the who had been his since the had gone off to live with their son in Mrs. Talsingh the to the house, as she often how this had something of a Her children kept her that it as to the road as it had been in the days when it was but she off their She had been this road for 60 years and she about to give into and a just to go a time was coming to a although it was still a with building in the of the She care. often in these 60 years had she this road on this or that of and And when had she had a more of business to She glanced at the the Now that all of them were her own house was no had their new with but she on lived in one of the in the and she all to persuade her to new and who knows what She was one of the last to keep her old at the thought of a right to where people and the she saw the cane she came to Zenobia as a the fields as far as the could a of fresh and when the was She when the would the fields to get of the before they their The of would be carried on the to all over the village as the the night a said they of and the seemed like a out of But she thought it was It was a time that the of the village and the itself was a of the tradition that had it since her from the had moved their own of She had once the American one of the cane that he too the of but the man had in his That however, gave her to that the American see things her even course, was as it had been when the American first came to The cane fields had long been to the growing of San and people could be to work in the as at the oil were so much more to their time was no what it a few people in the of most of the still cane although it was no a activity. Indian she were still to the of but Trinidad had gotten so uppity with its oil and that it could hardly be any Mrs. Talsingh thought that it was a terrible for people to of their like she knew that her had on the old and she was not so as to wish for a to the old of the But the seem so to her It was for one was a time you could the main road and own Now it was like a all and and that kept you from hardly any at and Mrs. Talsingh the and she was to see the of their whom she knew had gone up to to bring the American to she knew he was The American had told Mrs. to let the who knew him best know that he was around and would seeing although his would have to be this Mrs. Talsingh was one of those who had been to a bit of that further her the American had first come to it would have been for a woman to join the men at but had certainly and for given the purpose of her she was that they But after all, was her She wanted to tell the American that the shrine was now definitely going to be built, but she knew that he had been this since Hari was What did she him to do In she did not have a that when the came she would be given the to say that would the American to help her in some that she could not her she the to the to her was to the She could coming from the which was the of the house, so she the and by Mrs. came to the and said I should have it was you.” her Mrs. Talsingh come to see the She in the of the and off to the Mrs. Talsingh the American with Mr. and a few other village He immediately seeing her and he his in a that once have her but that she now to as yet that she was the right to see you, Mrs. he before I came down I was to some of old was one with Hari that I I the to have and I wanted to let you know how much always the you both Mrs. Talsingh the of her head scarf her in the but now seen of a respectable woman a man not of her is It was our Hari he always say how much he to you all about the you take in the that husband is well In and he and to the other around the just how fine a it is for a to be by his neighbors even after he has Mrs. Talsingh could hardly her good She thought she have to some sort of to the of her but was the American all her work for her. one t’ing that would made he even The other men but Mrs. Talsingh to the as a one and not a of she now is to to make it like he I wish you the best of I know will to help you in any he He sat down and to to his with the other men, Mrs. Talsingh to join the women in the where she got the Mrs. Talsingh her and said in a whose authoritative will But I t’ink Hari would like for you to She heard the other men and she hardly to at the American. But he to be if What I do to is the shrine before the first even be said She could the other men by the but as the American seemed to her impertinence they said I Building such a place from can't be on the cheap.” The other men and in much do you it will Mrs. Talsingh had no but she immediately not this figure came from she did not but once the were out in the open they The other men did not Mr. said in an you is our old to just give you on the you “No, all right,” the American more to make than to that he thought the figure was not I can't give you that much if what The other men in “But I certainly give you a that would be a good for to give something to Zenobia after all the all of you have over the The other women had come out of the to their out of this but they were in their when the American to the other men and if others be to do the He almost certainly knew the As well respected as Hari had no one in the village was to over so much as an old to help his build him a they were all on the with the of the couldn't be in of the The American them all by in an voice, this be the last time I to come to I time to do something like Everyone but no one that or he had a that this was something he wanted to but then that they all in to to his own a of the American his a bit and you know how with the big get of so that the temple really to Everyone a No one has to the burden by The remained in the he on with have new building they small a certain he was the men But a shrine was not a was the whole It if a had a of because the SDMS would be there to make sure everything got But in a household shrine, if was an then no one in particular was you could take family would take for to see that the place is kept that and so Mrs. Talsingh was not well know how it is is then no one is The men agreed, although they were still with her for so out he had the as a to get out of an the American seemed to to the once it was on the He at it Mrs. Talsingh and want to the shrine to But the Dookharine shrine was always dedicated to sure there people in the village who have to other or has a then family could make sure that its was for all of them could be shrine would be all year long, and not just on the days dedicated to the one Mr. as if in but then you know this probably better than any of this is a of just to old folks. children and grandchildren have no time for and “Is true,” Mrs. put in from the does come home for and but when all gone and she swept her around the in a of “But a nice building with a tradition the of the village be a good even for the young in years to come they want to keep up the I be so sure that what will then have a good in which to have social It a community The American he was and for the of village were to those of the old people in the He knew that in one or had the of the Indenture and the of the But he was not as certain as he to sound that it would the of and the of the But as he there to his old he knew that he was also to He have given Mrs. Talsingh the she was for had he the to do he was not sure about the of becoming a village patron on that But he still wanted the shrine to be it was the one he could to the of a bit of the local he had spent years The seemed to be the to get it done. He the in the and thought he they were The village Indians of Trinidad the of when it came to family, but on the village family to out for its own It was important for the Dookharines to operate a shrine on their own to which else was more or to there no a of their and He knew that Mr. Talsingh's he for his family to to that as The of the others from their to give the the to her And she was to the with her neighbors she her to the shrine as her The American realized that no than his old Zenobia was in his in his like the of them had to see the shrine built, as well as to the whole community you Mr. The American seemed that had been to that part of his A shrine first and of course, but then once it could be for purpose people thought respectable son that was a good to spend even with his than I Mr. said with a friends this with the time he said Mr. in a that made it clear that the was let know what you I to make a if the the village to the American Mrs. Talsingh the to some with the other who had to the She certainly much like to and they were for her to The remained and the was still when she The had not yet She could not say that she was at the of her all, she been sure what she had expected in the first place. But she certainly was not happy with the things She was sure that the village would the the the American was on his up to would come around to his of and the Talsingh family shrine into some sort of community She was on over this shrine is a shrine an’ not a community that she said to as if to her thought but the all from her mind. she got home she off her and set about her as she did so that she felt more than After all, even if this community came to it would still be on her land, and she was sure would not to such a the Talsingh the American would almost certainly up that with his own And if this of in the to the the purpose of else into in so that she up all the work so much the was certainly to be but at her had to take over And even if nothing happened, at least she had the in She had gotten a She had Hari's It was now out of her and more than would make the she sighed as she a of off the leaf she was to as a and it on one of her from her She around the a and sat down to her

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