The Toss of a Lemon

29. Time to Go 1938

GOLI AND THANGAM MOVE EVEN FARTHER AWAY in 1935, and then, in 1937, close enough that Thangam can consider coming to Cholapatti for Pongal, the January harvest festival. She is four months pregnant and, at Sivakami’s suggestion, agrees to stay until her delivery. Her health is waning; she lost a baby two years earlier while stationed too distant from Cholapatti to come and receive the benefit of Sivakami’s lucky hands. Krishnan, now a rambunctious three-year-old, needs companions to exhaust him, Sivakami believes. Sita, recently married, is preoccupied with her imminent departure for her husband’s home, and Laddu has been given a job at a oil-processing plant Vairum is about to open. The younger sisters, however-Janaki, twelve, full of unspent creative energies; Kamalam, a sweet and pliant nine-year-old; and Radhai, an indefatigable six-welcome their little brother with the aggressive delight of children who don’t have enough to divert them.

Goli brings Thangam, along with a business proposition, he tells his mother-in-law. They have arrived mid-afternoon, after six hours’ travel. Thankfully, the weather is temperate at this time of year, and though it’s the hottest part of the day, it is only about twenty-eight degrees outside. Still, Thangam, exhausted, is settled on a quilt to rest.

“Vairum is in Madras at present,” Sivakami informs her son-in-law, “though we expect him back tonight. You know he does so much of his business there, now, he has even bought a house. He is there two or three days every week. Will you have coffee?”

“Yes, of course.” Goli leaps to his feet. “You tell him to wait for me-when is it?”

“He gets back, I don’t know, tonight some time,” Sivakami repeats, unsure if he has said he wants coffee.

“… if he wants to make a deal.” Goli has exited.

Sivakami sighs, unable to decide whether she should pass on the message. There’s no guarantee that Goli has anything to offer that Vairum would want, and the chances of his returning the next day are so uncertain. After the previous fiasco, why try again? Goli ran his cinema into the ground within a year, Vairum told her.

She decides to ask Muchami what the chances are that Vairum would simply catch wind of whatever it is Goli wants of him.

“Oh, don’t worry, Amma,” Muchami tells her as he supervises the replacement of some bricks in the floor of the main hall. “No doubt the son-in-law will show up at the clubhouse tonight to play cards. The son-in-law will talk about his business as he plays and I will find out. When Vairum returns tonight, he will have to meet with his manager about the plant opening tomorrow, so word may reach him of the son-in-law’s business, but if Vairum doesn’t find out what is happening before me, I will tell him first thing tomorrow. Okay? Taken care of.”

If Sivakami were still looking, she would have seen Muchami’s reassuring smile fade as he turns back to his work. Muchami doesn’t know what Goli plans on proposing to Vairum, but a few weeks ago an old Cholapatti acquaintance of Goli’s had asked Muchami to give Goli a message: Goli, she said, owed her money. This was not someone who had bought a deer’s head, though the debt dated to that period. It was the devadasi. Muchami had had to ask Vairum’s assistance, being unable to write himself and wanting to keep the contents of the message within the family. The letter had probably prompted this visit and spurred an even greater than usual desire in Goli for some fast cash.

Muchami finishes his work with all the appearance of calm. His next chore is to whitewash the upstairs rooms. It is the season; the relatively cool, damp weather helps the whitewash to cure and so every house on the Brahmin quarter undergoes this makeover in preparation for the harvest festival. When Muchami finishes, around five-thirty, Vairum still hasn’t returned. Muchami goes home, and after a bath and his evening meal, goes out again. He had had thoughts, anyway, of going out that night on a personal errand, the sort he still runs occasionally. He stops by the Kulithalai clubhouse on his way and makes a pretense of buying a bottle of goli choda, a lime-flavoured carbonated drink. Muchami hates the stuff but pops the wax seal on the glass marble stopper, and pretends to drink, just outside the door, where he can listen to the men inside.

The next day, Janaki arrives at school before Bharati. When Bharati shows up and takes her seat at their shared school bench, Janaki makes the signal that is shorthand for their latest big joke, something to do with their maths sir’s stooped posture. Today, Bharati doesn’t laugh, not even a snort, but stares straight ahead. Janaki looks at her in concern. Bharati turns as though she is going to ask Janaki a painful question, and enjoy asking it. Then their maths sir enters, loping under the burden of his body. The girls face forward in silence, looking down at the slates in their laps.

Their silence lasts until eleven-thirty, when their lunch gang joins them, pulling other benches over to form a triangle where the five meet daily. Bharati, of whom they are all afraid, narrows her fish-shaped eyes-liquid brown irises, whites shot with blood in the manner of classical beauties-and tells them, “Go away.”

They all stop. She says again, “Eat somewhere else today.” They back away without question.

Janaki asks, “What is wrong?”

Bharati freezes a look on Janaki and asks in a voice glittering darkly, “Why don’t you ask our father?”

Janaki doesn’t understand this, nor does she know how to reply.

Bharati replies for her. ‘ “Our father, what do you mean our father?’ Oh, I was surprised, too, let me tell you. Turns out your dad and my mother were friendly way back, before my mother met the man I’ve called Appa all these years. He’s a Brahmin, too, a freedom fighter, a Congressman, and now he’s in jail, and can’t give us money like he always has. He’s very honourable,” she says pointedly, so Janaki understands this to be a contrast with Goli. “He got to know my mother just after I was born. Now I know why my younger sisters don’t look much like me! Anyway, now my mother told your father it’s time he chips in, and he thinks he can sweet-talk and bully my amma into letting him off the hook.” Bharati leans in close. “It’s the age of Kali, my grandmother says: the brave are in jail and cowards walk free.”

Janaki is trembling. She still doesn’t understand much except that her family’s honour is at stake. She points at her friend. “You are the coward. You are so full of lies you wouldn’t know the truth if it punched you in the nose.”

And then she punches her friend in the nose. Bharati comes at Janaki, scratching her temple and cheek. Janaki hits at her, and Bharati grabs her by the hair saying, again in that voice like mica, “Where does your father go at night, if you know so much?”

The other children have collected in a wide circle around them. Janaki is slap-scratching anything within reach but replies reasonably, because she knows the answer. “He goes to the club.”

Bharati tosses her to the packed-earth floor and hisses, “Where does he go after the club?”

Janaki is weeping. Bharati walks away. As the teachers hurry over, Janaki yells, “I don’t even know where your house is.”

Bharati spits back over her shoulder, “Follow him tonight. You’ll find it soon enough.”

She pushes her way past teachers and students, to wash her face and clothes at the school pump. Neither girl is permitted to walk home unescorted, so, abject, stony, dishevelled, they finish out the afternoon on their shared bench.

As Janaki is learning things about her father that she doesn’t want to hear and claims not to believe, the man himself mounts the steps of Sivakami’s veranda. Vairum, having spent the morning inspecting the oil processing plant he is to open that afternoon, is lying down for a few minutes before leaving to drop in at Minister’s salon.

“Hullo!” Goli yells from the door. “Hullo! Vairum! Big chances afoot-come on out.”

Vairum slowly descends the spiral staircase into the main hall, as Sivakami, having her own meal in the kitchen, stands hurriedly and goes to wash her hands.

“Well, well!” Goli rubs his own hands together. “You are looking prosperous these days-filling out!” Vairum puts his hands on his hips as Goli continues, “So-I have a proposal.”

“Want to sell me another tract of your family land, eh?” Vairum stands on the last step, looking down at Goli. “Must be getting down to the last few parcels now. I sent for the registrar first thing this morning to make sure this wouldn’t take any longer than necessary.”

The young official, who had been sitting in the vestibule between the front door and the entrance to the main hall, unfolds his gaunt frame and pokes his head in hopefully.

Goli looks at him stupidly and then points at Vairum. “You hang on-don’t you assume anything, little man. We’ve got some bargaining to do.”

“I pay better than anyone else in the presidency, Athimbere, in part so I don’t have to waste time bargaining. Your father knew that better than anyone, and I know you know it, too, which is why you’re coming to me.”

“How dare you mention my late father,” Goli snarls, advancing on Vairum.

The lands in question passed into Goli’s possession the year prior, with his father’s death. Before that, Vairum had twice made similar transactions with the older man, who had fallen into the same troubles as so many Brahmins, his need for cash outpacing his ability to coax income from crops, forcing him to sell off.

“Either sit down and do what you came here to do, you fool, or get out,” Vairum tosses back. “We’re not doing each other any favours.”

Sivakami tries to intervene from the kitchen entrance with a civility. “Please, Vairum, offer the son-in-law coffee. It’s almost ready.”

“Fool? Fool? As if I need your stinking cash.” Goli reaches into a document case he carries and flings a set of papers at the registrar. “Who is the fool here?”

Vairum indicates to the young official that he may begin. “I would say it’s the one who fathers children he can’t support. Ah-” He holds up a finger as Goli winds up with a retort. “One word out of you and this deal is off-I defy you to find anyone else who will buy these lands for as much money as you need. And you and I both know you need it now.”

Goli makes a noise of strangulation and goes out into the garden. What, Sivakami is wondering, does he need the money for? It must be some debt. She knows he gambles-but surely he can’t have lost this much money on cards? Another business scheme gone awry, she supposes.

As Vairum begins counting the stamp papers and checking the description of the property against the deed, he instructs the official to put the property in Thangam’s name, carrying on the tradition Sivakami’s brothers started.

“You may be willing to rob your children of their inheritance, Athimbere,” Vairum comments loudly, “but I am not.”

“Vairum!” Sivakami says again from the kitchen, and he looks at her sharply. She wants to say what he already knows, that he is the better man and that he need not remind Goli of that, but she cannot say that with Goli and Thangam present, even though Thangam has lain with her eyes closed, on a reed mat cushioned with homemade quilts, in one corner of the main hall, throughout this exchange, which she gave no indication of hearing. Sivakami’s thought makes her feel slightly as if she is betraying her daughter. Regardless, Vairum already knows it, so she need not say it. Instead, she remonstrates, “The neighbours might hear.”

Vairum’s lip curls. He turns back to the paperwork, finishing it off with a flourish. “Your turn to sign, Athimbere,” he says, rising. “Take it to my bank in Kulithalai. The manager is expecting you.” He puts on his shoes at the door and leaves before Goli re-enters.

That day after school, Janaki makes a point of telling Sivakami that she is going to study up on the roof. Her books in their strap, slung over her shoulder, she treads the stairs with leaden feet, matching each step with a hand slap against the wall in the narrow stairwell. The fresh whitewash makes the pads of her hands chalky, and when she arrives in the sunlight, she claps her hands to make little dust clouds. She walks slowly around the edge of the roof as Vani plays. The sun is already slanting low enough to make two feet of shade along the western side.

Looking down into the next yard to the east, she sees Dharnakarna, the witch, feeding idli to her sister-in-law. Their tiffin hour is often amusing, the witch patiently timing the mouthfuls so they don’t get slapped across the courtyard. The sister-in-law won’t bite the hand that feeds her, but she snaps at it sometimes. Janaki moves across the back and looks down into her own courtyard and the woods behind. A brief breeze parts the lingering stillness of the afternoon air. Parrots are beginning to fly among the trees. She can’t see if Bharati is in her regular spot behind the house: she’s pretty sure Bharati won’t have come but will not go down to check, in case she has.

She circles, coming up the western side of the house, from which she can see into Rukmini and Murthy’s courtyard. Rukmini has fetched Krishnan to play with her, and Janaki hears his laughter. She moves again toward the front of the house, unable for once to sit still and listen to her aunt play. The sounds of the street dissolve as day thins into dusk.

Kamalam arrives from downstairs as Vairum comes to carry Vani’s veena to their quarters. Vani follows. Kamalam and Janaki stand in silence at the front of the roof until the moment when-you can almost miss it-outlines of shapes disappear and become one with the dusky blue air. Then Janaki says to Kamalam, “I’m going out and I’ll be back before suppertime. If I’m not, though, just say I have fallen asleep up here and don’t feel like eating. Say I’m being cranky if you are sent to wake me up.”

Kamalam is frowning. “Why…?”

But Janaki just shakes her head and waggles her finger as she walks back to the stairs. She descends cautiously into the main hall, which is empty apart from their mother, who sits thin and pregnant against the back wall. Where is Sita? Talking with one of her friends out on the veranda. Janaki cannot leave the house, by front or back, while Sita is out there-she will be visible from the veranda as she takes the cart path out of the Brahmin quarter. She hides behind the stairs and calls out, “Sitakka! Sitakka!”

Sita shouts back, “What?”

“Come back and help me with this, just for a second.” Janaki pops her head out to yell, and then hides again.

“What?” Sita says bad-humouredly from the vestibule. “Where are you?”

“By the well, just for a second, really.” Janaki watches her mother, who doesn’t react.

Sita says an exasperated goodbye to her friend and heads for the back by way of the kitchen. As soon as she enters the pantry, Janaki scurries for the front and slips out the door as the sounds of Sita’s fury start to mount.

She picks her way along the edge of the cart path leading to the main road into Kulithalai. As she steps onto the road her heart begins to pound. She has barely been out after dark and never alone. Figures approach and she steps aside so they pass her without seeing her or inquiring as to her business. She doesn’t want to give anyone stories to carry back to the Brahmin quarter. She is risking being seen and talked about; she is risking not being seen and not being missed, should anything happen. But what choice does she have? She turns onto the main road and keeps to the shadows.

The club is within a walled compound but there is no one guarding the big iron gate. At night, the grizzled old peon patrols the compound occasionally but must also make change and sell goli choda for the card players to mix with spirits they bring themselves.

Janaki looks for a place where she can spend the next few hours unseen, waiting for her father. The clubhouse faces the tennis court. Men approach it from one side. The other side is sheltered but smells of urine; one can imagine it is used often over the course of the evening. Janaki opts for a large neem tree at the back with a branch obligingly bowed into a seat, thick enough for her skinny twelve-year-old bottom.

From there she catches only glimpses of men as they walk past the barred window. Once they are seated they are hidden from view but a large gap between the wall and the roof thatch lets her hear the men’s voices, including her father’s, rising above the slap and shuf fle of a deck of cards. From the few Janaki saw, she didn’t think they looked like an appropriate class of men to be associating with her father.

“So you transacted the necessary business with your brother-in-law today, Goli?” a man says in a Brahmin accent. Janaki is surprised that there are other Brahmins here, though she doesn’t know why she should be.

“He’s going to get his comeuppance one of these days,” Goli says by way of reply.

“I hope I’m around to see it,” the first man says. “He owns half of my family properties now.”

“Yes, well, today, he opened a factory on my ancestral lands,” sputters another Brahmin. “And if that’s not enough, I swear, half my tenants are going to work in it! I could kill that guy. I swear, if he wasn’t the son of the most orthodox lady in the Brahmin quarter, I might think he’s a progressive. Did you hear what he’s paying?”

Janaki, wincing at his inelegant Tamil, listens harder.

“Vairum is canny-and fair-minded,” says a warm, gravelly voice in a non-Brahmin accent that Janaki can’t place. “Happy workers are good workers.”

“Sure, I’m all in favour of non-Brahmin uplift,” says the other Brahmin reservedly. “But for non-Brahmins like you, Mr. Muthu Reddiar, self-starters, of good family. Putting power in the hands of the illiterate masses, though-it’s a recipe for disaster.”

“The man wants to start a revolution, that’s what,” Goli cries. “He wants to be king.”

“Seems to me the Brahmins around here have profited as much as anyone from business with Vairum,” Muthu Reddiar insists, an edge to his voice. “He’s generous, you have to say that for him.”

“I don’t have to say anything good about that man!” It sounds as if Goli has thumped the table.

“All right, all right,” says the first Brahmin. “Let’s take it easy. You can rest assured that most if not all the Brahmin quarter shares your opinion, Goli.”

“What a week,” Goli complains.

“Have you been to see Chellamma?” someone asks, and Janaki starts.

“Last night. She won’t budge,” Goli growls. “Bitch.”

Janaki gapes at the crude language, feeling sick.

“Hasn’t given me the time of day since Balachandran came on the scene, and now she expects me to pay for that pup? Ravana!” Janaki can’t tell if he’s cursing at Bharati’s mother or just lost a hand of cards.

“So don’t pay,” the first Brahmin man advises.

“She’s got me over a barrel,” Goli says darkly. “She’ll go to my boss.”

“What-” the man starts, but Goli breaks in: “Deal. I’m done talking about that.”

The clubhouse goes briefly quiet except for the slap and slide of cards and occasional muttered words. Then the night erupts in hooting and shouts as someone wins. Janaki listens to the chime of the men’s tumblers and wrinkles her nose at a puff of tobacco smoke that has drifted from the clubhouse window.

The cycle repeats, the men’s voices blurring and sharpening with emotion and drink. At one point, Janaki drowses, shakes herself, drops off again-and drops off the branch. It’s a rude shock, but she is not hurt by the fall. She runs behind the tree when the peon looks out the window, and then remounts the branch.

It must be well on for nine o’clock when Goli finally wins a round-the biggest pot of the night, according to the ribbing he receives. He loudly claims that it only earns him back what he has lost, but it sounds as if he’s being modest. Janaki, hearing him announce his departure, perks up.

“Lads, I’m sorry to say I must take my leave of you now.”

“Come on, Goli, let us at least win back our dignity.”

“Sorry, you’ll have to face your wives without it. Not the first time, I would say.”

More hoots.

“Last time Nallathumbi here stripped himself of his dignity his wife ran from the room in fright!”

Nallathumbi makes his rebuttal. “Naked, I inspire men and frighten women. Just as it should be.”

They all laugh, satisfied. Goli takes his leave.

Janaki allows him a few moments before slipping from the tree, praying to herself, “Please go home just go home please go home just go home go home go home.” She tails him to the gate. “Go right go right right right.”

He hesitates, looking both ways, and turns left. Janaki pauses a second, to look down at her toes, bare and vulnerable as they emerge from beneath the paavaadai. My toes look purple in the moonlight, she thinks. How curious. She too emerges from the gate.

In the dark this is not the town she knows. The night forgives a lot; she doesn’t want to imagine what sins it lets slip by. Kerosene flares make sinister shadows that dance and dodge no matter how still the body that throws them. Janaki is frightened and focuses on her father’s back as though it is a magic charm whose powers she doesn’t know and yet has no choice but to trust.

At the end of the commercial thoroughfare, Goli strikes east along the curving road that rings the town. Janaki is not so scared now. The velvet dust between her toes is like the dust behind their house when she relieves herself at midnight, and the shadows cast by moonlight are steady and sedate. She permits herself to imagine Bharati’s house and her mother.

In her mind, Chellamma is slatternly. Lumpy mounds of flesh, conniving eyes ringed in thick kohl, scheming lips reddened by betel, layers of powder over a dark and uneven complexion. Janaki really cannot understand what her father would see in such a woman, when he has the most beautiful wife anyone’s ever seen. Janaki gasps aloud: witchcraft! Bharati’s mother captivates men with spells. That must be it!

She is walking faster and faster, working herself into a fury of indignation, and nearly overtakes her father but catches herself in time and drops back. Finally he steps onto a small path leading to a mud house with thatched roof. It is lit within by kerosene lamps, proof of their prosperity. Janaki, though hardened by anger at Chellamma’s nerve, doesn’t fail to note the tidiness of the swept path, the walls as freshly whitewashed and decorated for Pongal as any Brahmin’s.

She sees her father stoop and enter the dwelling. Janaki paces the periphery clockwise until she comes to a window. She approaches it and startles.

Bharati’s knowing smile matches Janaki’s frightened face as though the window were a magic mirror. Bharati makes no noise, but, giving Janaki a sly nod, seats herself to allow Janaki an unobstructed view.

Bharati’s younger brother and three sisters are clustered in a corner around their grandmother. Her mother, Chellamma, matches her house: she is a small, tidy woman with wrinkles around her eyes that seem to Janaki oddly familiar. She is not fat and slovenly; she is just… plain. And tough-looking. Her mouth is set in a hard line as she tells Goli, “Hand it over.”

Goli hands her a packet of rupee notes. Janaki thinks of the day before, when she saw her first of the new five-rupee notes that have just come out, with a portrait of George VI. She wonders how much her father has paid.

“You could have had all the income from that land,” he jeers, “but you had to make me sell it, didn’t you?”

Chellamma turns away from Goli, and Janaki sees the hardness drop away for a moment. In its place is an expression tired and sad, and Janaki recognizes the lines around her eyes: they’re like her own mother’s. As Chellamma crouches and pours a tumbler full of water flavoured with palm sugar and ginger, Bharati’s grandmother speaks from a corner, where she is assembling betel nut and leaves from a rosewood box.

“Oh, and how was she supposed to manage that land from here? If it was any good, you would have been able to keep it and pay us from the income.”

Goli suddenly explodes, his hand chopping against his palm. “You have no proof! Why should I pay at all?”

The grandmother coolly looks down at the spade-shaped leaves in her palm, a winning hand of cards.

“What proof do we need, beyond your bragging of the strength of your seed?” the old woman says as she streaks the leaves with calcium paste and rose-petal gel. “Everyone knows you were the man my daughter was receiving at that time.”

“Pah!” Goli appears at a loss for words.

Chellamma, the hardness returned to her face, turns back and holds out a plate to him, on which sits the cup of flavoured water.

“Look at Bharati’s forehead, her eyebrows, her hair,” Chellamma says. “Do they not look familiar?”

Janaki watches the old woman sprinkle the leaves with areca nut, cardamom and rock sugar, roll them into three-sided packets and pin them shut with cloves.

Chellamma places the betel packets on another plate and, pulling her sari over her shoulder, offers it to Goli.

Janaki waits for her father to slap the plate away and send the odious packages flying. Instead, he puts one in his mouth, then puts another in Chellamma’s. The gesture has the ceremony of a pact-sealing and the intimacy of lovers’ service. Janaki starts to cry.

“So our business is concluded?” Goli asks Chellamma in a low voice.

Chellamma inclines her head, lowering her eyes and lifting them again. Goli touches her cheek. “I’ll be around a few more days,” he murmurs.

Bharati’s head pops up in the window and Janaki, unable to face her, turns her back to the house and sits on the ground. When she sees her father leaving, she follows him home.

Kamalam looks as though she has been holding her breath since Janaki left. She doesn’t ask questions. When Janaki starts to cry again, Kamalam kisses her hand and strokes her hair, but Janaki only cries for a minute or two.

At lunch hour the next day, when their friends begin cautiously to pull up their benches, Janaki and Bharati say, “Go away,” almost in unison. During the morning’s lessons, they have been civil but serious-cooperating in maths, participating in history. Now they incline toward one another.

“I’m sorry,” Janaki says.

“Me, too,” Bharati quickly responds.

They are quiet for a few moments.

“Is your mother saving for your marriage?” Janaki asks. She’s not sure why she put her question this way, other than that she doesn’t know how else to ask what she wants to know.

Bharati smiles a little, wearily. “You don’t know much about us, do you?” she asks.

Janaki shakes her head quickly, holding her breath.

“I’m married already,” Bharati begins.

“You are?” Janaki is amazed. She had no idea. “Did your mom take you to Pondicherry?”

“Uh-uh. Madurai.”

But that’s the city closest to Pandiyoor, Vani’s hometown, Janaki thinks. It’s within the Madras Presidency.

“I didn’t marry a man,” Bharati continues. “We… in my caste, we marry a god. There aren’t too many of us around here-my grandmother came from Madurai -so she took us back there for my wedding ceremony.”

“How did-you married a god?” Janaki frowns.

“It’s just like a wedding, you know. Except the groom is a god statue, dressed up. You even have a pretend wedding night, where you sleep with a sword, in a bed. I don’t really get that part,” Bharati admits, blushing. “But, anyway.”

“What’s…” Janaki begins, realizing she can’t tell Bharati’s caste from her name. “What’s your caste called?”

Now Bharati looks at her sharply. “We’re devadasis, Janaki. You didn’t know that?”

Janaki’s eyes widen but she tries to stop herself from looking too shocked. She is pretty sure she has heard the word “devadasi” whispered as though it is something scandalous. After a moment, though, she admits, “I don’t really know what that means.”

Bharati looks as though she’s trying to decide whether Janaki is telling the truth.

“Well,” she starts, cautious and a bit didactic, “you know we really believe in education, especially for girls. That’s why I learn music, and I’m in school, and I have a dancing master, too, who comes to my home. My mother and grandmother had live-in instructors.” She warms to her story, starting to sound more assured, and older. “My grandmother was quite famous in Madurai, so much so she got a big patron, a Kulithalai Brahmin, who brought her here. So that was my grandfather.”

“Oh…” Janaki’s trying to absorb all this. “You learn dancing?” This is probably the most incredible aspect of the story so far.

“Yes-sadir. You should come and watch me dance sometime,” Bharati offers warmly.

“Sure,” Janaki says, thinking she might have gone to Bharati’s house before, but now she doesn’t think she can face Bharati’s mother. “So your father and grandfather were Brahmins? But you’re not.”

“Uh-uh.” Bharati is emphatic. “Devadasis don’t marry the men,” she clarifies. “You got that, right?”

“I guess.”

“We’re artistes.” She pauses, then elaborates, sounding now as though she’s making an argument, to Janaki or herself. “And we’re good omens because we’re nityasumangalis-‘forever married’-because a god never dies.”

Janaki wonders what it’s like to be a good omen. Her grandmother hardly ever goes out, in part because widows are a bad omen and she doesn’t want to do that to anyone. Does Bharati always want attention because she’s a good omen? But she still can’t walk on the Brahmin quarter.

“It was funny when the census came,” Bharati goes on. “My mother had herself put down as married, and me as unmarried. The census taker did it, but you should have seen how they looked at us-so self-righteous.” She smirks, before growing reflective. “My amma is worried-people are talking about abolishing the devadasi system. There’s a lady minister, a doctor, who’s been pushing for it. Then what are we supposed to do?”

“You could marry, like everyone else,” Janaki suggests, not meaning to sound derisive.

“First of all, there aren’t many boys of our caste,” Bharati says, looking at Janaki like she is slow. “No devadasi keeps more than one son. Not like Brahmins, where all they want are boys.” Now Janaki does feel stupid. “Devadasi boys aren’t educated much; they don’t earn. All they can do is maybe play drums or something. Who would want one of those?”

They are quiet.

“You’ll be all right,” Janaki says after a few moments. Bharati looks at her. “I just know, things will turn out good for you.”

Bharati smiles at her and shyly looks away. “You’ve never had a half-sister before, huh?”

“No,” Janaki says and politely returns the smile. She feels strange, aware that she no longer feels the urgent need to gain Bharati’s favour.

When Janaki returns from school that afternoon, her father is sitting on the veranda, chatting with several neighbours, Brahmin men she knows slightly, not well enough to have recognized their voices at the club the night prior. Hearing them now, as she passes on her way into the house, the night scent and nervousness of her vigil come back to her. Her father doesn’t acknowledge her.

She has a snack and changes her clothes. She is about to start up the stairs to listen to Vani, who has already begun playing, when she hears shouting from the front. Her uncle has come home.

“I don’t want anything from you, you peasant-lover!” Goli screams.

“That’s a nice change, then,” Vairum spits back as he mounts the stairs. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“Sooner help a non-Brahmin than anyone from your own caste!”

Vairum doesn’t turn. “Keep your epithets to yourself.” He shucks his shoes in the vestibule and enters the main hall. “Hypocrite.”

Goli runs in after Vairum and, picking up Vairum’s shoes, throws them. One hits his back. Vairum turns and seems to watch the other hit his front, not even lifting a hand to bat away this insult, the erasure of caste.

“You love untouchables so much, now you can be one,” Goli sneers. He backs out of the vestibule, through the crowd, and disappears.

Vairum walks slowly out to the veranda and faces the Brahmin-quarter denizens staring from his stoop, fair, flabby men, fingering their holy threads and shoulder towels.

“Here-I stand before you, uncasted,” Vairum softly proclaims. “Has he acted on your behalf?” he asks, gesturing over them as though to clear a small cloud. “A low and unscrupulous scoundrel, who has left his children for me to raise. He has thrust me beneath caste?”

He looks at them and they look away; one man clears his throat. They are thinking, variously, that Vairum is the scoundrel; that Sivakami, and not he, is raising the children; that Vairum may be in the right but it is best not to get involved in a family fight. But none speaks, and Vairum closes the door on their faces.

“You see, Amma, why I care so little for what the neighbours hear.” Vairum turns to face his mother, who comes out now from the pantry, where she stood and watched the exchange.

“Oh, my child.” She holds her arms out toward him and he looks at her incredulously.

“You understand you are party to this, yes? The man hangs around my front stoop waiting to insult me, Amma. Why do you protect him?”

“I never wanted, I…” I would have done anything to save you from this. “For your sister.” What can she say-is it not obvious that she would give her life for him?

She looks around at Thangam sitting in the corner where she has lain since her arrival, her body rigid, her neck stiffly bowed to hide her face. Kamalam and Janaki watch from the corner by the kitchen, and Sivakami sees Muchami watching Janaki from the garden door, all of her feelings mirrored in his face: how to keep children from harm? She has done all she can to protect all of them-hasn’t she?

“You have never done what is best for my sister,” Vairum thunders. “The Brahmins on this street have never accepted me, and now your son-in-law has uncasted me like those ruffians uncasted your Rama. There is no reason for me to live here. You can have your precious neighbours, and your reputation. Vani and I are moving to Madras.”

“Don’t do that, my son,” Sivakami says, confused.

He calls Vani.

They need take nothing: they each have a full wardrobe in their house in the city, and Vani a better veena, though she has gone there only twice a year till now. They take leave of Sivakami, doing a prostration for her. Sivakami doesn’t know if Vairum means to force his mother to give them her blessings, or if Vani insisted on their paying Sivakami their respects. When they rise, Sivakami hugs them, though only Vani returns her embrace. Vairum keeps his arms stiffly at his side. She is crying, though from her right eye only.

She calls Janaki to offer Vani a plate of turmeric, betel and vermilion.

Sivakami doesn’t know what “hypocrite” means, and doesn’t know why Goli was accusing her son of loving non-Brahmins, but she knows Vairum has not shown nearly the sort of allegiance with his own caste that the times seem to demand. She feels small and old, and frightened.

It has been years since Janaki has helped Muchami with the cows, and she feels awkward and guilty as she goes to the cowshed the next morning. She feels she is being babyish. She can’t even wholly admit to herself her motivation: she wants desperately to talk about what she learned about Bharati. She presumes her mother and grandmother don’t know, and she can’t be the one to tell them. What if they do know? It would be horrible to talk about it, especially now that Goli is responsible for Vairum’s leaving. Kamalam is too tender; her eldest sisters are too far away. Sita would call her a liar, and Janaki would never talk to her about anything important or painful anyway.

She thinks Goli has done something wrong, but has he, and what, exactly? The man Bharati thought was her father sounds honourable, and Bharati made it sound as though his second family might not even be a secret from his first. Sivakami must not know about it. But maybe the only thing Goli did wrong was not paying. Janaki feels as though she is banging weak fists against her own unyielding head. Who can help her to understand this?

Once she sees Muchami at work in the shed, however, she is unable to talk to him either. He is a servant, she tells herself, even as she feels an ancient urge to climb into his lap and put her arms around his neck. He is not part of the family. If he doesn’t know, I can’t be the one to tell him, and if he does know, it would be improper for me to discuss it with him. She backs out of the shed without saying anything, and goes slowly toward the house. She doesn’t feel like crying; she feels as though a black wind whirls dryly at her centre, obscuring something essential from her view.

Muchami had heard her come in. He turns and sees the hem of her paavaadai disappearing into the house. He guesses she wanted to talk. Perhaps it’s about Goli, perhaps…

Of course: her school friend. She must have said something to Janaki about Goli owing her mother money. Nothing can be proven; he hopes neither girl has heard the rumours that the devadasi’s daughter is his. It’s not a subject he can raise with Janaki, though. Hopefully, she’ll just let it go.

FIVE MONTHS LATER, Thangam gives birth to another baby boy. The child is lusty and red, and when his sisters see him, they gasp at his beauty: he alone among them has inherited Thangam’s golden eyes. Thangam, though, is exhausted, and lies with her eyes closed, until Sivakami says, “Thangam? Thangam, kanna, do you want anything?”

Thangam raises her head and Sivakami freezes: Thangam’s eyes are now stone cold blue. She shakes her head, no, and lies back down to sleep.