Sundari
Sundari was born on December 8, 1497, in the thorn-scrub country inland from the Gulf of Khambhat. The Gujarati-speaking villages there paid revenue through local intermediaries to the Gujarat Sultanate. Her family kept the routines of village Hindu life: a small smear of red earth on a stone for the gram-devata near the edge of the settlement, lamp soot on the beam above the hearth, and offerings of millet bread and buttermilk on fast days when the women asked for protection.
She grew up in a house shared by three generations, where the courtyard belonged to elders. Sangaji, her grandfather, sat on a low plank in the mornings and listened to talk about seed and fodder. Kesarba, her grandmother, decided which grain jar would be opened and how much water could be spent on washing cloth. Sundari was very short even as a child; she learned to carry smaller pots more trips instead of one heavy trip. She became quick with her hands and eyes. When she helped in the field she could spot weeds in the crop rows faster than older girls, and she remembered which neighbor’s well turned brackish first in a dry spell.
Her father, Jetha, worked a village service craft and took on whatever farming the household managed. He left early on some days with tools wrapped in cloth, returning with a bit of grain or a coin, and sometimes nothing but dust on his ankles. He expected things to be where he had left them. Sundari misplaced his knife once and he made her stand by the doorway until it was found. Her mother, Rami, pulled her away afterward and set her to pounding grain, not speaking but keeping her close.
In 1500, Rami bore a son. The baby, Kalo, lived only a short time. That evening Kesarba took a pinch of vermilion and marked the threshold, and the next morning she walked Sundari to the village goddess stone. They left a smear of ghee and a few grains of pearl millet, and Kesarba tied a black thread around Sundari’s wrist. After that, Rami kept a small clay lamp burning longer on certain nights.
Sangaji died in 1510. Without him, arguments in the courtyard lasted longer. Kesarba corrected Sundari’s work more sharply. Sundari learned where to sit to avoid being pulled into every exchange: on the low edge of the cattle trough in the late afternoon, when the air cooled and the goats pushed their noses into fodder. She liked the moment when water first hit her hands at the well, and she delayed lifting the pot to enjoy the coolness. It earned her scolding.
Her marriage was arranged in 1511 with Natha from a nearby village, close enough that the dialect and customs felt familiar. She walked there with a small bundle of cloth and a few brass items. Natha’s mother, Motiba, ran the household and watched Sundari for mistakes—a jar left uncovered, a fire started late. Sundari rose before sunrise, swept, lit the cooking fire, and went out to weed when the men said the field needed it. She never became someone who enjoyed the cluster of women gossiping at the well. She drew water quickly and spoke in short replies.
Jivi, her first child, was born in 1513. Sundari carried the girl on her hip while she winnowed grain, and later set her down under a charpai shade while she worked. Jivi liked to sing fragments of bhajans she heard during festivals, nonsense words mixed with the names of Krishna. Sundari laughed once when the child called a stern auntie “buffalo-face,” and then clapped a hand over the girl’s mouth.
A second daughter, Ganga, was born in 1516 and died within days. Sundari washed the infant with warm water and turmeric and handed her over for the rites without argument. Kesarba, the grandmother who had once tied a black thread around Sundari’s wrist, died later that year.
In 1517, Jivi fell ill during the fever season and did not recover. The girl had been four years old, old enough to call for her mother, old enough to be missed. After that Sundari took vows more seriously. She fasted on certain days, ate plain food, and brought small offerings—coconut, a pinch of rice, a thread—when she went to the goddess stone. She also began keeping a small packet of poppy preparation in the fold of cloth at her waist, first for pain in her back and the sleeplessness that followed Jivi’s death.
Her son, Kanu, was born in 1519. The household’s attention shifted to the boy, and the criticism of Sundari quieted for a time. She still worked in the fields during peak seasons, bent low in the rows because her height made it easier, her hands moving in quick bursts. She was clever enough to bargain for a fair share of gleaned stalks and to judge the measure of grain in a pot by sound. She also left tasks unfinished when no one stood over her. A half-latched jar drew rats. A pot left too close to the fire cracked. Each mistake became a reason for someone to speak over her.
Poppy preparation was common in the villages around Kathiawar. Women bought it in small wrapped packets from traders who passed through, and men drank it dissolved in water after work. What had started as a pinch in the evening became something she needed every morning. By 1523 she could not get through the day without it. She bought small amounts through a neighbor’s contact, trading a bit of clarified butter or a brass bangle. On mornings without it she moved slowly, sharp in speech. Natha drank too, and money kept slipping away—into drink, into fees, into the small costs of keeping a household’s standing. Sundari did not lie easily and she refused to pretend a debt was smaller than it was. That honesty gave her no advantage inside the house.
Her mother, Rami, died in 1524. Sundari heard the news from a visiting cousin and walked back to her natal village for the rites. Her father looked smaller than she remembered. She stayed three days, grinding grain with women she had known as a girl, and then returned to Natha’s house. After that, when trouble came, there was no one she could send word to who might speak on her behalf.
The arguments between Sundari and Natha had always been sharp, but as both of them drank more and the debts grew, Natha started hitting her. The first time he struck her across the face during a fight about a missing coin, she did not leave the room. After that it became a pattern. Once he accused her of hiding money and beat her with his hands and then with a stick. Bruises spread along her arms. She slept that night on the packed-earth floor near the cooking area. Another time he hit her in the courtyard in front of a sister-in-law who laughed and called her “little stump.” Sundari went to Hira, a neighbor woman, and stayed there two nights, helping grind grain in exchange for shelter. When she returned, elders spoke of harmony and duty, and Natha stayed quiet for a few weeks before it started again.
The 1530s brought hard seasons. Some years the rains failed early, fodder thinned, and the price of grain rose. Other years brought sickness through the villages, with coughs and fevers that took children and old people. Sundari watched these shifts carefully, counting days between market trips, listening to what men said about what they owed. She could see trouble approaching and still failed to prepare in the ways others wanted—forgetting to stash kindling, losing a tool, letting the poppy packet empty and then scrambling for it.
Her father, Jetha, died in 1530. A message came and she went again to her village. She touched his feet and watched the pyre. When she returned, Natha said nothing about it.
Kanu grew into a young man and began to work more independently. He respected his mother’s quick mind but disliked her habits. He avoided speaking to her when he smelled the smoke of her preparation.
Natha died in 1541. His death did not make Sundari safer. In the weeks that followed, his brothers and cousins met without her and divided the land and grain stores among themselves. They gave her a small share of millet and told her the rest was not hers to claim.
Kanu married a woman named Sona the following year. Sona was practical and careful with money. She saw Sundari’s habits—the trembling hands in the morning, the small packets bought with grain that could have fed the household—and made clear that she would not support them. Kanu did not argue with his wife. By the end of 1542, Sundari had moved to a small mud-walled room at the edge of the village, alone.
Now that she had to feed herself, the debts mounted. She borrowed grain from Bhaidar, the village moneylender, with terms she understood and could not escape. To cover interest she sold small things: a cooking pot, then an old brass plate, then a goat. She hired herself out for weeding and harvest work and came home with chaff in her hair. Some evenings she sat outside Hira’s doorway, accepting a cup of watered buttermilk without conversation. When she had a few coins she bought more poppy preparation, and the next morning she could move without trembling.
In 1548, after another poor season, the women who gathered in the evenings to share news and arrange small favors stopped calling for her. She had once been welcome in those circles—quiet, but useful for her quick sense of who owed what to whom. Now she smelled of poppy smoke and could not be trusted to return a borrowed pot. She still attended major festivals, standing at the edge with other widows. She carried a small lamp to the goddess stone and left a pinch of rice and a strip of cloth. She liked the first bite of hot millet bread when it came off the griddle, eaten alone, before she had to think of the next day.
In 1552 she developed a harsh cough that did not resolve. She continued to fetch water until she could not carry even the smaller pot. She lay on her mat and listened to the sounds of the village: cattle, children, the creak of a well rope. Hira brought her thin gruel once. Sona sent word through a neighbor that Kanu would not take her back into his house. Sundari did not ask again.
She died on October 18, 1552. Women from nearby households washed her body, rubbed it with oil, and placed it on a simple bier. Kanu lit the pyre at the cremation ground outside the settlement, with a small offering of ghee and a final pinch of rice.