The Tale of A Bamboo Fence

The general consensus in the village was that the feud started when the younger one decided to put up a fence of split bamboo stalks on the edge of the property.

Chetan asked, why does he have to put it up? Father gave the land to both of us.

Aniyan said that he wanted to build a boundary wall, but that he had no money for it.

Chetan retorted that he should have saved the money from his years in the Gulf, instead of taking frequent trips around the country.

Aniyan was of the opinion that none of this was Chetan’s business.

Of course, this dialogue was not held face-to-face; rather, it was told to, and reinterpreted by the hangers-on the main road of the village- in front of the tea shop, in the barber shop, and in bus-stops. In the tradition of a close-knit community, a family feud between two brothers became the lore of the entire village.

The school teacher laughed as he narrated an anecdote. He was outside the panchayat office, when he ran into Aniyan. Chetan was just leaving the office, and seeing him, Aniyan remarked, there goes the son-of-a-bitch.

The teacher pointed out that the son-of-a-bitch was his own brother, and so reasoning determined that….

The men in the barber shop laughed at that. The school-teacher had his moment of pride.

Chetan walked up the fields to my aunt’s house when we were sweeping away the dried leaves from the pebbled-yard. He showed a picture of a girl on his phone of a young woman, in a sari, with a string of jasmine in her oiled hair, and a smile that clearly caused her some agony.

Chetan said, she’s too dark for my son, don’t you think?

My aunt shook her head and made a remark about the son not exactly being a Bollywood hero.

Chetan grinned sheepishly, and said, but she has a job in the bank, so the money is good.

The next few months went by in a flurry of activity. The brothers were still not talking to each other. Chetan would come to update my aunt on the preparations for the wedding. We were invited one evening to their house to look at the jewellery and the clothes that were purchased for the wedding. Bundles of silk sarees and heavy gold necklaces lay scattered on a bed. The groom-to-be flitted in and out of the room; his adulthood and his choices deemed irrelevant by his parents who had orchestrated every aspect of the wedding.

I imagined the bride-to-be in her house feeling the same way. Perhaps she went to the beauty parlour often in an attempt to lighten her skin. Perhaps the two talked over the phone, and dreamt together of having a house of their own.

Aniyan’s visits to us were scant to begin with. My aunt was a teacher in the village school and so almost everyone who grew up there knew her. This required mandatory social visits, but it was evident that something troubled Aniyan. His wife came to talk to my aunt one evening.

She broached the purpose of the visit carefully, how are the wedding preparations going on?

-You should ask them. They’re family.

- Chechi asked me to go look at the sarees. She said that there’s one for me too.

- It is the custom, isn’t it?

She sighed and nodded; the fact that Aniyan would not have wanted her to go to Chetan’s house was understood from her resignation.

When the wedding was a month away, Chetan announced that the invitations were ready. Every household got one, an egg-shell coloured card with a gold embossing of Lord Ganesha. It was to be a simple wedding, but the reception was to be held on Chetan’s portion of the land, the same land that had Aniyan’s bamboo fence going through it.  

One morning, the fish-seller informed my aunt that Chetan had gone to Aniyan’s house the previous evening to give him the invitation. After a while, Aniyan’s wife visited us, carrying with her the news of her new silk sari (‘Chechi knows what colours I like!’), and of Chetan’s request that they both be present for ceremonial blessing of the groom. They had consented, of course.

Chetan’s house became a hub of activtity- the poles for the reception tent had arrived, there were huge pots in the backyard, and Chetan had taken to carrying a notebook with him to note down the details of all the expenses.

But perhaps the best news came a few days before the wedding. It was once again the fish-seller who brought us the news; he had seen Aniyan and a few men untying the bamboo rods of the fence.

When asked what he was doing, Aniyan merely said, Chetan could use the extra land for the reception. I will think of building my house after the wedding.