The Sultan's Battery by Aravind Adiga Page B

photo.
    “The boy’s parents will expect something,” he said. “A gesture.”

    “Dowry,” Ratna gave the evil its proper name in a soft voice. “Fine. I’ve saved money up for this girl.” He breathed out. “Where I’ll get dowry for the next two, though, God alone knows.”
    Gritting his teeth in anger, he turned to the kitchen and shouted.
    The next Monday, the boy’s party turned up. The younger girls were made to go around with a tray full of lemon juice, while Ratna and his wife sat in the drawing room. Rukmini’s face was whitened by a thick layer of Johnson’s baby powder, and streams of jasmine ran through her hair; she plucked the strings of a veena and recited a religious song, while looking out the window at something far away.
    The prospective groom’s father, the firecracker merchant, was sitting on a mattress directly opposite Rukmini; he was a huge man in a white shirt and a white cotton sarong, with thick tufts of glossy, silvery hair sticking out of his ears. He moved his head to the rhythm of the song Rukmini was playing, which Ratna took as an encouraging sign. The prospective mother-in-law, another enormous fair-skinned creature, looked around at the ceiling and the corners of the house. The groom-to-be had his father’s fair skin and features, but he was much smaller than either his father or his mother, and seemed more the family’s domestic pet than the scion.
    Halfway through the song, he leaned over and whispered something into his father’s hairy ears.
    The merchant nodded. The boy got up and left. The father held up a small finger and showed it to everyone in the room.
    Everyone giggled.
    The boy came back, and squirmed into place between his fat father and fat mother. The two younger girls came with a second tray of lemon juice, and the fat firecracker merchant and his wife took glasses; as if only to follow them, the boy also took a glass and sipped. Almost as soon as the fluid touched his lips, he tapped his father and whispered into his hairy ear again. This time the old man grimaced; but the boy ran out.
    Perhaps to distract attention from his son, the firecracker merchant asked, in a raspy voice: “Do you have a beedi, my good man?”
    Searching in the kitchen for his packet of beedis, Ratna saw, through the grille in the window, the bridegroom-to-be urinating furiously into the trunk of an Ashoka tree that grew in the backyard.
    Nervous fellow, he thought, grinning. But that’s only natural, he thought, feeling a little affection already for this fellow who was going to be part of his family soon. All men are nervous before their weddings. The boy appeared to have done with his piddle; he shook his penis, and stepped back from the tree. But instead of walking away, he stood frozen. After a moment he craned his head back and gasped for air, like a man drowning.
    The matchmaker returned in the evening to report that the firecracker merchant seemed satisfied with Rukmini’s singing.

    “Get the date fixed up soon,” he told Ratna. “In a month, the rental rates for the wedding halls will start to -” he made an upward gliding motion with his palms.
    Ratna nodded, but seemed distracted.
    The next morning, he took the bus to Umbrella Street, walking past the furniture and fan shops until he found the firecracker shop. The fat man with the hairy ears sat on a high stool, in front of a wall full of paper bombs and rockets, like an emissary of the God of Fire and War. The groom-to-be was also in the shop, down on the floor, licking his fingertips and turning the pages of a ledger.
    The fat man gave his son a light kick.
    “This man is going to be your father-in-law, aren’t you going to say hi?” He smiled at Ratna:
    “The boy is a shy one.” Ratna sipped tea, chatted with the fat man, and kept an eye on the boy all the time.
    “Come with me, son,” he said, “I have something to ask you in private.”
    The two walked down the road, neither saying a word, till they