Gold

I imagine my mother and her pieces of gold.  She is fifteen and newly married.  She is living in a new country with people she has not yet begun to care for.  In her homesickness she touches this piece of gold, traces another.  Her own mother is growing older by the day in another country.  In those days parents gave more gold to their daughters than could be afforded.  If three pieces of gold was affordable, they gave four.  Once married, in those days daughters seldom returned to their mother’s house.  The separation was too vast for frequent visits.  Daughters became strangers and the extra gold, given despite hardships, was a tacit token of love.  Daughters relived moments through gold – this pair of bracelet, that ring.  In hours of loneliness the bride touched her anklets and wept.  I imagine my mother retrieving pendants and pins from a box, pressing metal against her chest as one would a photograph.  There must have been, in that moment, a longing to fold every distance there was between her and her parents.

When I married I received more gold than was my due.  My relatives were astounded at how much gold was given me.  They didn’t think it necessary.  I didn’t wear much gold anyway.  I, a girl of trousers and shirts, could not appreciate gold, they thought.  But they were wrong.  Every piece of gold given to me is precious.  I cling to them as would a miser, revel in them as would a goldsmith.  I take my horde out and wear what I can when I can.  I glitter.  My husband laughs at my vanity.  Relatives have wrongly concluded my father is a very rich man.  They think gold is an asset, a back up for difficult days.  They believe gold can be sold off if need be.  They are wrong.  My parents are wrong too.  They too gave me gold as asset.

Gold binds me to my parents in ways I cannot explain.  I imagine my father and mother visiting shops, flipping catalogues, ordering certain makes and styles.  I see them more interested in the weight than the fashion of the jewelry.  The heavier the gold, the more secure my future against unseen floods, and no matter how much they give, they feel they haven’t given enough.  Ma adds her personal jewelry to the stack.  She slips off her ring, the one she has worn for years, and it becomes mine.  It is a spiral ring, the kind that fits everyone.  I wore the ring on my wedding day.

Growing up there was a hexagonal box, wooden with copper flower embeddings and very dear to my mother.  It was locked and then locked away in a cupboard in my grandmother’s house.  The cupboard was shared by Ma and her siblings.  I supposed each of the siblings had a somewhat similar, ornate and many edged box to preserve valuables.  Growing up I saw the hexagonal box a few times.  I knew there was gold in it but I was too young to be interested.  Ma would pull out the box and remove one or more articles to wear for weddings or other occasions.  She always wore the matarmala, the pea-garland, so named because the beads were pea-shaped and pea-sized, strung together to make a neck piece.  She wore the big ring with a peacock on it.  Often, before putting the box back into the cupboard, she would look at me.  “This is all yours, my sack of sugar,” she would say.

After Ma died I saw the rest of the gold.  Her wedding set – the set of dangling jhumka ear pieces, the kangan bracelets, the heavy pendant of the mangalsutra, the tiny tika to sit upon the forehead.  They were beautiful.  My mother must have resembled a goddess during her wedding.  But my heart was pulled by the matarmala, the pea-garland.  Why had Ma preferred the matarmala to the mangalsutra, or to that beautiful moonstone pendant?  The mangalsutra was so much more beautiful around the neck.  It would have set her apart.  But it was the matarmala she had worn over and over again, over the years, for everyone’s wedding, including mine.  For my wedding I had wanted her to wear something new, but Papa, who gave me more gold than was my due, could no longer afford to buy new gold for Ma.  I told her to take some of mine.  I had too many, but she refused.  She wore the matarmala. 

And then she was dead and her jewelry was spread out before us.  My brothers, their wives, and I sat on the bed.  Only Papa stood behind the bed and the hexagonal box with Ma’s jhumka, her kangan, her tika stayed between him and us.  I tried not to look at the matarmala.

I wanted to tell them – Papa, my brothers and their wives, that the box was mine, but I did not say anything.  Gold is uglier than money.  Gold is brighter than the sun and sometimes more beautiful than bonds of love.  And so I watched quietly, without touching anything but I wanted to run my fingers over every piece.  I wanted Papa to tell us stories.  This, I wanted him to say, is what she was wearing when I first saw your mother.  This was my present to her when you were born, and this when you, and this when you.  This made her look like a queen.  This we had such a war over.  When she wore this I could not stop looking at her. 

But Papa did not say anything.  Perhaps, like me, he felt he was dismembering her, felt he had no rights to display what Ma had kept so well hidden, and that he had no rights to distribute them.  He knew too that it was all mine.  Ma had told him that so many times.  But he could not say that now. 

He distributed the collection evenly.  One ring for my older bhabhi, one for the younger, one for me.  One bangle for my older bhabhi, one for the younger, one for me.  One toe ring for my older bhabhi, one for the younger, one for me.  It did not matter that pairs were being separated.  The bangles, the rings, the ear-pieces, these no longer constituted ornaments.  They were simply gold now, simply metal, valued more for weight, for the money they would bring in if sold.  My brothers watched quietly too.  Finally my brother picked up Ma’s tika.  “This for my daughter,” he said.  I smiled, the pain receding a little.  He would preserve the tika now, not think of it as an asset.  He would keep it safe for his daughter.  “And this,” he said, and picked up the matarmala, the pea-garland.   I must have flinched.  I flinch now when I think of that moment. 

“The matarmala is mine,” I said.  “I want it.”  I thought I was going to cry.  “You can take everything else,” I said.

I wish I had not said he could have everything else, as though my brother did in fact weigh the worth in money.  I wish now I had had a larger heart, loved my brother more.  He smiled and pressed the matarmala into my palm.  “Yours,” he said, and kissed my lips, the way he always has. 

The distribution went on.  This for her, this for her, this for me. 

I imagine myself in gatherings, smiling.  People ask me where I found that exquisite neckpiece.  I finger the beads, pea-sized.  It’s my mother’s, I say.