Climbing the Stairs Read online

  “Venkatraman so skillfully weaves Hindu words, traditions, and religious festivals into her story that readers understand the vocabulary and appreciate the beliefs.… With a delightfully strong female protagonist who struggles between tradition and the values she holds dear, this novel will capture the imaginations of many readers.”

  —VOYA, starred review

  “British-occupied India during World War II is the setting for this impressive debut novel.… Thought-provoking and deeply moving.”—Book Sense

  “A welcome addition to the small but growing body of historical fiction about growing up female in India … This novel excels in its detailed depiction of a Brahmin girlhood and family life during a time of intense social and political change.”—Kirkus Reviews

  “[A] poignant look at a young woman’s vigilance to break from expectations and create her own destiny amid a country’s struggle for independence.”—SLJ

  “In an author’s note, Venkatraman comments on several elements of the novel, including Gandhi’s nonviolent revolution, Indian volunteers in the British Army during World War II, and her family history.”—Book links

  “Climbing the Stairs … is a passionate story.… In the novel, books serve as a saving grace…The central theme of the novel, violence and nonviolence, will appeal to an international audience.”—India Currents

  “[A] fine, often heart-breaking novel.”

  —The Providence Journal

  Escape from subservience…

  just for a while.

  The staircase stood silent and empty. But it was forbidding. The barrier between the two floors of the house was unbroken except at mealtimes, when the men descended into our realm. Only men used the stairs. If anyone caught me walking up them, what would periamma do to me?

  I put my foot on the first step hesitantly. I picked up my long skirt and climbed slowly.

  At the top of the stairs, there was a door and a long corridor. The door probably led to the men’s hall, so I walked the corridor. It was quiet.

  At the end of the corridor, there was another choice. Two doors—one ornate and carved, of rosewood; the other more functional, of teak.

  The teak door opened easily, revealing a room lined with books.

  I walked up and down the length of the room, gazing at the books with delight. The library was larger than I’d ever imagined.

  A leather-bound book with gold lettering on the spine caught my eye. It was Oliver Twist. I remembered Kitta’s remark and smiled. The old grandfather clock at the far end of the library ticked softly.

  I pulled the book off the shelf and settled down on the window seat to read it until the last pink blush of sunlight had faded. It was like a dream, finding this place. I turned on the lamps and read until the clock chimed half past seven, reminding me that it was time to go down and serve the men dinner.

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  Climbing

  the

  Stairs

  Padma Venkatraman

  speak

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  This book is dedicated to A. N. Aiyar (my thatha)

  and Ambujam Venkatraman (my amma).

  SPEAK

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008

  Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2010

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Padma Venkatraman, 2008

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Venkatraman, Padma.

  Climbing the stairs / Padma Venkatraman.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In India, in 1941, when her father becomes brain-damaged in a non-violent protest march, fifteen-year-old Vidya and her family are forced to move in with her father’s extended family and become accustomed to a totally different way of life.

  [1. Family life—Fiction. 2. Prejudices—Fiction. 3. Brain damage—Fiction.

  4. India—History—British occupation, 1790–1947—Fiction.]

  I. Title

  PZ7.V5578Cl 2008

  [Fic]—dc22 2007021757

  ISBN: 978-1-101-65054-7

  Designed by Richard Amari

  Text set in Garamond.

  Printed in the United States of America

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Ms. Viji Varghese for proofreading early drafts; the library staff at the College of William and Mary, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Rhode Island, Lancaster University, Yorktown, Jamestown, and North Kingstown; the editorial team at Penguin for insightful comments; and Rainer Lohmann, Barbara Markowitz, and John Rudolph, for their steadfast support and encouragement.

  Contents

  August 1941

  Krishna Jayanthi

  Rifka

  Mahim Beach

  The Chess Game

  Periappa

  Black Crow

  The Protest March

  The Idiot

  Ganesha Chathurthi

  Madras

  School

  Upstairs

  Chinni Chithi

  Hans Brinker

  A Walk

  Saraswathi Poojai

  Raman

  Deepavali

  Raman’s Gift

  The Library

  The Outhouse

  Karthigai

  Malati’s Wedding

  Malati’s Departure r />
  Pearl Harbor

  Pongal

  Air-Raid Drills

  The Dark Fortnight

  Kitta’s Choice

  Alone

  Saidapet

  The Officer

  St. Thomas Mount

  The Return

  The Proposal

  The Diary

  In Thatha’s Study

  The Evacuation

  Coimbatore

  Madras, August 14, 1942

  Author’s Note

  Discussion Questions

  Research and Writing Activities

  Climbing

  the

  Stairs

  August 1941

  I still remember the day we celebrated Krishna Jayanthi, the festival of Lord Krishna’s birth, at our home in Bombay. The drive was drenched with the juice of fallen jamun fruit and the sand of Mahim beach gleamed like a golden plate in the afternoon sunlight. Whispers of heat rose from the tar road and shivered toward the slumbering Arabian Sea.

  I had folded up my ankle-length skirt and was getting ready to climb up the jamun tree. A warm breeze blew around my bare knees. My brother’s brown legs were already wrapped around the roughness of the main trunk, clinging on like a monkey to its mother’s body. Kitta was eighteen and he’d just started college, but though his voice had recently deepened and the first fuzzy promise of a black mustache shadowed his upper lip, he still looked more a boy than a man. Our dog, Raja, was yapping loudly, wagging his tail.

  I spread an old rug on the ground beneath the tree and climbed up after him, scraping my skin against its lumpy bark. Soon we were shaking the branches, watching the ripe purple fruit rain onto the rug like a monsoon shower.

  “Vidya!” amma called. I glanced down. I could see her disapproving gaze from where she stood, barefoot on our verandah, the open patio in front of our home. Ever since I had turned fifteen and started wearing a half sari, she had been hoping that I would become womanly, not climb any more trees, run no more races across the beach sands and stop playing volleyball at Walsingham Girls’ School (she felt it wasn’t ladylike).

  She held a bowl and a small white rag in her hands. “Would you like to decorate the verandah?”

  Every year we would paint tiny white footprints all the way across the red cement on the front steps and verandah, into the marble-flecked mosaic floor of the house, through the great hall and to the prayer room in the back; footsteps to lead Lord Krishna into our home. I didn’t mind. It was one of the few girlish tasks I enjoyed.

  “I’m going to paint some Krishna feet,” I told Kitta. I climbed down and patted Raja on his head. I tried to rinse the purple stains off my hands at the brass tap in the corner of the garden, scrubbing my hands with the hairy hide of a fallen coconut. I straightened out my skirt and walked up the stairs.

  “Thank you,” amma said, forcing the corners of her mouth upward. Her smiles had been different ever since appa had started coming home late. The bright white sign still hung on the door of the clinic behind our home, slightly askew, stating in English, Hindi and Marathi that the doctor worked from nine o’clock to five o’clock during the week and from nine until twelve on Saturdays. But he no longer kept those hours. He went missing, at least a few days each week, returning after Kitta and I were back from school. Some evenings, amma sent us to bed before we saw him.

  “Where do you go, appa?” I had asked, and he had patted my head and replied that he had started another job.

  “What job?” I had asked. “Why do you need two jobs?”

  To which he had simply replied, “Nothing for you to worry about.”

  The only time I enjoyed hearing him say those words was when he had said them to amma, a month ago, on her birthday.

  He had taken us to Mr. Sultan’s jewelry store. Kitta and I had been sitting on plush satin-backed chairs in the showroom, clinking the ice cubes in the tall glasses of sweet lime juice that the store hand had brought to us on a silver tray, trying to see which of us could swirl the liquid faster without spilling it.

  “Everything looks beautiful on you,” appa told amma. Pairs of gold earrings were set out on the glass case in front of them, glimmering against the blue velvet that lined their boxes. Amma held up a diamond-studded flower design beside her perfect crescent-shaped earlobe, then gasped when Mr. Sultan mentioned the price and put it back.

  “Get it,” appa said, smiling indulgently.

  “But it’s so expensive,” amma said worriedly. “Can we really afford it? Shouldn’t we be saving for Vidya’s dowry?”

  Appa had taken one look at the shock on my face and said to her, “Nothing for you to worry about yet.”

  My marital status hadn’t been mentioned again, but surely it was only a matter of time. Every other fifteen-year-old in the fifth form of Walsingham Girls’ School had had her horoscope sent off to families with eligible sons. I was determined to delay its distribution. That horror of a document was only a page long, but it was filled with rectangles that told the position of the planets on the day of one’s birth, and before any marriage was arranged, a soothsayer had to look at the horoscopes of the girl and the boy to make sure they were compatible.

  Would my parents let me go to college after I finished sixth form? I wondered about that for the umpteenth time. Amma was so happy being a housewife that she was convinced I needed to get “settled” and married off to a “nice” boy from a “good” family, sooner rather than later. I couldn’t think how to explain to her that I wanted more. Anyway, appa made all the big decisions.

  “What’s the frown for?” Kitta yelled, interrupting my memories as he peered down at me through the tree branches.

  “Nothing,” I said. Today wasn’t a day for worrying about marriage. It was the festival of Krishna Jayanthi.

  I dipped my hands into the cool, white, watery rice paste, wetting a corner of the small square cloth with it, and then I squeezed the paste out of the rag, carefully drawing tiny footsteps with circles for each toe. I loved the story of mischievous Krishna, an incarnation of God, born on the seventh day of the seventh month of Shravan, with skin the blue-black of a midnight sky. Krishna’s sermons were embedded in the Bhagavad Gita, but although he could be serious when he was fighting evil, he was also playful and he never lost his sense of humor.

  The roar of our car interrupted my thoughts. The wroughtiron gate creaked as Xavier, our watchman, pushed it shut and retired to his room at the foot of the drive. Appa was in the backseat of the blue Austin. I waved at him, raising my right hand, which held the soaked rag. Blobs of rice paste spattered across the floor.

  Appa didn’t smile or wave back, as he usually did. He threw open the door when the car stopped without waiting for Suruve, our driver, to hold it open for him. Raja raced up to him, barking a joyous welcome, but appa didn’t stop to stroke him.

  Amma reappeared on the verandah. She had tucked a string of kanakambaram flowers in her hair, and they peeped above her head in an orange halo that matched the heavy, goldembroidered silk sari into which she had changed. Her plump cheeks were dimpled in a welcoming smile, but she was not gazing at appa. Instead, her eyes were fixed on appa’s kurtha. Or rather, on the strange rust-colored stain spread across his loose, collarless shirt.

  “I’m all right,” he told her. “It’s not mine. I’m fine. Really.”

  What wasn’t his? I wondered, staring.

  He seemed not to see me and walked up to amma, putting his strong, muscular arm across her shoulders in a rare display of affection. He ran a finger across her forehead, ironing out the worried creases. His broad-shouldered frame filled the doorway.

  Amma looked small and vulnerable when she stood next to him. She darted a frightened look at me, as though to warn him not to say too much. Then she straightened up against him, saying, “Shall we have some tea?”

  “Yes, and I should change before that.” He let her go and smiled down at me at last. “What beautiful footprints, Vidya!”

  I grinned up at
him proudly. “Appa, I was thinking of what we could do for the weekend. Rifka says there’s a new cinema theater that’s opened up, and she says it’s not all reserved for whites, and there’s a section on the ground floor where Indians are allowed—”

  Appa pinched my cheek affectionately. I expected him to say yes, as he usually did, but instead he said, “Sorry, but we can’t go out this weekend. Your eldest uncle is coming over on Saturday morning, and we need to spend time with him.”

  I didn’t try to hide my disappointment. “Periappa’s visiting? Why?”

  “He was up north on a business trip, so he’s decided to stop and see us before returning to Madras.”

  I scowled.

  “None of that, young lady.” Appa wagged a warning finger at me. “You’re old enough to stop acting childish. He’s my elder brother, and you’ll respect him.” Before he stepped indoors, he added, “And remember to tie Raja up Saturday morning before he comes. You know how periappa feels about dogs.”

  After he left, I stared glumly at the floor.

  Kitta descended from his perch and walked toward me. “Come on,” he said, grinning. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

  “I guess not,” I conceded. “It’s just—I can’t believe he’s appa’s brother, can you? He’s so, so—”

  “Orthodox?” Kitta suggested.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Appa doesn’t care that we’re Brahmin, but periappa never forgets it, does he? He treats our servants like dirt just because they’re a lower caste.”

  “Most Brahmins like throwing their weight around,” Kitta said.

  “That’s not what we’re supposed to do, is it?” I said. “We’re supposed to read the scriptures and teach and pray. Live an ascetic lifestyle.” According to appa, caste was a social evil, not a Hindu belief. He said caste had begun with a relatively compassionate idea of a code of conduct: that the Brahmins, who were scholars and priests, should never take up arms or seek wealth or power. Caste wasn’t meant to be hereditary or exclusive or hierarchical, but Brahmins and other “high” castes now oppressed those without education or wealth.