The Toss of a Lemon

30. Rainy Season 1940

IT’s THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL. Janaki and Bharati hold hands up to the schoolyard gate, then uncouple while their servants, Mari and Draupadi, wait to escort each of them, and their younger sisters, home. They are both nearly five feet, and wear uniforms of a half-sari-a long cotton paavaadai in navy blue, with white blouse and white davani, a cloth piece wrapped once about the hips, across the chest, and over the shoulder-indicating they are now more women than girls. They both came of age this year-Janaki is nearly fifteen, Bharati has commenced her sixteenth year-and will not continue in school, since all higher levels are coeducational.

“Well, see you later,” Janaki says, at a loss. They know it’s not likely they will cross paths again.

“Bye,” Bharati rejoins, with a sweet smile. “Good luck, with marriage and all.”

Janaki reciprocates, open and genuine. “And good luck to you-whatever comes next.”

Bharati raises her eyebrows, amused and practical, but then Janaki is alarmed to see Bharati gulp as her eyes brim slightly and she blinks. “Yes, whatever comes next. G’bye, little sister.”

It has become one of their private jokes, to call each other little sister and big sister, thangachi and akka, though Bharati started the joke. Hearing the reference now returns to Janaki her guilty relief at this parting. Ever since she learned of their blood relationship, she has felt mildly cool toward Bharati, in spite of their greater closeness. She both dislikes this feeling and feels it is justified. She doesn’t think it shows; Bharati, she thinks, might not even have picked up on it.

Back when Bharati was uncertain of who her father was, Janaki and she remarked innocently on the coincidence that they both lived with their maternal grandmothers. Now that they share a father, Janaki frequently tells herself that she and Bharati really have nothing in common, because otherwise she would have to admit she identifies more with Bharati now than before. They both feel ashamed of their father, though he disappoints them in different ways.

Their slight estrangement had been facilitated by Vani’s absence, since Bharati no longer had a reason to come and sit behind their house. They continued to spend all their time together at school but no longer had an after-school relationship.

When they had outgrown their first veena teacher, Bharati’s mother had engaged a music tutor who came, once a week, all the way from Thiruchi. Bharati invited Janaki to come and participate in the lessons. It was tempting: Janaki had had to work hard to keep up with her music since Vani and Vairum moved to Madras. She practises at least an hour or two every day on the veena Vani left, which has, de facto, become hers. Once a week, there is an educational music program broadcast on the radio, and Janaki goes to Gayatri’s to take it in; occasionally, she goes to weddings, where she makes a point of learning some new songs from whoever is the best musician in attendance. The few times Vani has come back to visit them in Cholapatti, Janaki, in her desperation to learn, has been persistent to the point of rudeness, but Vani is ever patient and indulgent with her: playing, listening to Janaki play, wordlessly making corrections and modelling improvements.

When Bharati asked again if Janaki would be coming over for veena lessons, Janaki shook her head. “My grandmother says I’m too old to be going to others’ houses for lessons, that I should just practise at home.”

Bharati tossed her head a little, lifting her chin as though something were flying past it, and said coolly, “Very conservative, your grandmother.”

Janaki felt herself get hot: she had always understood “conservative” to be a compliment-why didn’t it sound that way coming from Bharati? But then Bharati appeared to correct herself. “So’s mine, in her own way,” she told Janaki with a return of the intimate joviality that Janaki now shrank from. “Too bad. It would have been fun.”

In fact, Janaki had never asked her grandmother. She wouldn’t have wanted to admit to having a devadasi as a friend, though she knows that, were it not for their other connection, she would have found a way to attend the special lessons.

And now Bharati is turning toward the rest of her life and Janaki, toward hers. Janaki knows her own near future, but not the far. She will stay home, but will receive a tutor, young Kesavan, who will help her maintain her Sanskrit and other basic academic skills. Next year, her grandmother will start to solicit potential grooms. Beyond that, she cannot see.

Janaki, Radhai and Kamalam, all of whom have come home from school together, wash their hands, face and feet, and change into everyday clothes. Radhai goes to play with Krishnan next door at Rukmini’s house, where he spends every day, the first of Thangam’s pre-school children not to pass his afternoons with Muchami. Though Muchami missed having a child with him, he had no means or desire to override Rukmini’s proffered affection for the little boy.

Kamalam and Janaki take their embroidery and go to sit on the veranda, where they will be met by Ecchemu, a Brahmin girl of about Janaki’s age, with whom Janaki has become friendly. Ecchemu is a dull, silly girl, but, by virtue of caste and age, is an appropriate companion for Janaki. Where Bharati has always made Janaki feel frumpy, Ecchemu causes her to feel her own attributes keenly. She has always known she was smart, but now she may have become pretty She is of average build, unlike Kamalam, who, at five feet and five inches, is by far the tallest of the sisters. Janaki has inherited something of her father’s square jaw and forehead, but her demure, perceptive gaze is hers alone, as are her creative talents, which always exceed available outlets.

Since Sita left for her husband’s house, Janaki has taken over the drawing of the kolam every morning, the rice flour design that ornaments every threshold. Where their house used to display no more than a perfunctory few lines and dots of the required symmetry, it is now daily decorated with a kolam no less than three feet across, often embellished with birds and flowers. Janaki admires her latest-a cobra wriggled across the threshold in perfect diagonals-as she takes her seat on the veranda and smiles condescendingly at Ecchemu, who is just arriving.

As they work together, Ecchemu chatters vapidly about her sister’s recent marriage. Janaki doesn’t listen, but instead reflects on the academic career she has just ended. She performed well-better than any of her sisters did, and likely better than Kamalam or Radhai will. None of them have her desire for knowledge, her determination and application. She knew full well she would have no more than an elementary education, though, and it doesn’t occur to her to be discontent at not going further. Rather, she is grateful to Sivakami for continuing to give her tutoring, more than most girls receive. Now she is looking forward to marriage and to raising a family, as much as she can look forward to events both inevitable and essentially unknown.

SEVERAL MONTHS LATER, Navaratri approaches-festival of dolls. It’s Janaki’s favourite, not surprisingly, since it offers chances for imaginative play, and because it includes several days of tribute to Saraswati, goddess of music and education, the deity Janaki feels most personally inclined to worship. Gayatri, when she comes for her morning coffee, tells Janaki stories, innocent and repetitive, of how the holiday used to be Thangam’s favourite, too.

It feels like a strange coincidence, then, when the day’s mail contains a letter from Thangam, the first Janaki has seen. It is written in pencil, in Thangam’s own hand. In places, the writing is so light that it disappears. In others, Thangam has pressed so hard that the thick, nubbly paper has torn, as though she were leaning on the pencil for strength.

“Amma,” it begins, after the usual “Safe” in the upper right corner, and the date, in the left.

He has been moved again. He has already gone and I must ready the things. I think my baby is due in some three months. Can one ofmy daughters come to help me? Baby Raghavan is very strong, red and chubby. Please send a girl if one of mine can come to help. I know all of my girls are very strong. Do not worry.

It finishes with her name, laboriously inscribed at the bottom.

Janaki is in the middle of her veena practice. Sivakami shows her the letter. “You’ll go, Janaki? Muchami will take you.”

“Yes, Amma,” she responds rapidly. Why is Thangam asking Sivakami not to worry? What does her grandmother have to worry about?

Sivakami smiles, looking wan. “Good girl. Maybe you can be ready to leave day after tomorrow?”

It’s a pleasant nine-hour journey northwest. Janaki has brought a slate, to pass the time, and gives Muchami a few Sanskrit lessons. He is too shy to work aloud in so public a setting, but she writes out lines for him to copy. He has continued to sit in on Janaki’s Sanskrit tutorials, though young Kesavan practically ignores him. Once in a while, though, Janaki, in a didactic mood, will take it upon herself to quiz Muchami on the basics. He has grasped these, though his pronunciation continues to be atrocious and Janaki doesn’t try to hide her impatience as she corrects him.

When they are done with Sanskrit, they watch the landscape shift outside the barred windows of the train. The greens and browns of the Kaveri delta give way to pinkish rocks and sparser settlements as they climb into the hills. It’s the monsoon season, and the air smells of rain. Twice, they ride through cloudbursts.

They chat, but not much. There is a distance between them now, which both feel it proper to observe. Janaki is glad for it, because it indicates the difference in their stations-she is growing up and happily anticipating the small powers that will fall to her as a matron. Muchami, for his part, still feels the weight of the child she was on his hip. If she tends to boss him, if she is short with him over his Sanskrit, he indulges her. She is still his favourite and he is proud of her.

Once in the town, Muchami, carrying her bag, hurries ahead and drops behind, inquiring repeatedly. They find the house. Two-year-old Raghavan gallops out of the house. When they stoop to caress him, he whinnies and ducks and continues past them, into the neighbour’s house. The neighbour emerges carrying him. She is a tall, thin woman with severe looks. Tics in either side of her face pull her mouth down in clownish grimaces. Raghavan seems to think she is making faces to amuse him, and to Janaki’s mortification, imitates her and laughs, clapping his hands.

Thangam leans in the doorway and smiles at them, a smile below which stretch two cords in her neck, like the pillars of a suspension bridge. She is as grey as ash, and as incorporeal.

Muchami says, “Thangam? Are you well?” But Thangam just stands back silently to let Janaki enter the small dwelling. Janaki moves toward her mother to kiss her, but Thangam makes no similar move and her initiative fades. She puts her bag in a corner while Thangam makes coffee for Muchami, who squats at the front stoop.

They are living in a house with the well in the middle of the main hall, under an open skylight. Raghavan runs around the well, flings himself gaily against the walls, pulls saris and braids. Once he stops and walks delicately to a shrouded pile. He pats it gently, saying, “Amma. Ga’phone. Amma! Ga’phone.” She smiles, goes to the mound and unveils the gramophone.

Raghavan sits and watches the turntable with the intensity of the little dog on the label waiting for his master’s voice, while Thangam takes four records, one by one, from a high shelf. She fits the needle into the gramophone’s arm and the key into the body and winds. Janaki and the neighbour sit, while Muchami moves into the front doorway. First they hear a loud scratchiness, then a single veena as though heard over a river’s rush. It’s “Sami Varnam,” the same recording they heard when Goli first gave Thangam the machine.

Thangam plucks the disc from its bed, sheathes it and takes out another. The new record also rushes and shushes, riverine-but it is a vocalist this time, not a veena player. The singer is very young. Janaki has never heard Bharati sing, but she finds herself imagining her friend at home, in that pretty hut with no neighbours, plaiting her hair after her oil bath, kohling her eyes dreamily in a fragment of mirror, singing through barely parted lips.

They all know the song: “Balagopala Palaya Mam,” a devotional song for Lord Krishna, composed by Dikshitr, one of the immortals of south Indian classical music. Janaki sings along, and even the severe-looking neighbour joins in. Thangam leans against a pillar with her eyes closed. Little Raghavan claps his chubby hands and occasionally cuffs one of them in delight.

But Thangam forgot to rewind the machine, and when the song is nearly at its end, the disc begins to slow. Seventy-eight rpm becomes sixty-five, fifty, thirty-five. Raghavan stops mid-clap to listen to this dying groan. Janaki giggles at the funny sound, at the expression on the little boy’s face. Seeing her laugh, he begins laughing also.

Thangam opens her eyes, pulls out a third disc and slips it on the turntable, not forgetting to crank this time. She looks at her children and visitor with a sly expression, one that might almost be mischief. Janaki stops laughing in amazement, but many people are still laughing, more than are present: from the phonograph issues a river of giggling, chortling, guffawing and twittering, the laughter of a large number of people of all ages and sexes that, in ensemble, creates the cadences of a familiar, elementary tune, “Vara Veena.”

It is a novelty record, a fashion item: music of laughter. Minister probably has a copy; he rarely misses a fad.

Raghavan doubles over, laughing louder and harder. At this, at him, Janaki starts laughing again; the neighbour joins in, and even Muchami, at the door. Thangam smiles, her eyes closed again, looking almost peaceful.

Oh, thinks Janaki, as she lies that night with her baby brother sleeping in her arms and the first monsoon rains thrumming through the skylight, why could not every day of our lives have been like this?

Janaki sets to work the next day, getting them ready to move. Muchami, seeing that there are no servants here, is arranging to transport their belongings to the new home, while Janaki, Thangam and the baby will take the train.

Not much has been packed yet but there is not much to pack. Still, progress is very slow at first because each item Janaki puts in a bag or trunk, her little brother takes out again. So instead she sets the things down beside the luggage and tells him to leave them there. He mischievously packs them one by one. In this way, things get done.

Janaki is shocked at how few furnishings there are and asks if some items have not gone ahead with her father. Thangam shakes her head. Janaki shrugs and continues to make arrangements, knowing her mother must have had more copper pots than this-there are gaps in the usual size sequence. She’s sure they had more in the Karnatak country. And only one silver plate-unheard of. She admits to herself what is clear: her father must have pawned the pots and plates over the years.

The transfer of goods and persons to the village of Munnur is completed without incident. Munnur is to the east, a few hours closer to Cholapatti, back on the Kaveri. Muchami, after delivering them, takes his leave. When Janaki sees him off on the veranda of their new home, even more modest than the last, he inclines toward her and speaks in a low voice. “Janaki, your grandmother gave you a little money, yes?” Janaki confirms it.

“Keep that safe,” he instructs, sounding reassuring, no longer the servant, but Sivakami’s representative. “It’s for an emergency. You never know what might happen. And you know how to contact us, if you need to? To send a letter?”

“Yes, of course,” Janaki says-she’s fourteen, practically an adult!-but also scared at the degree of responsibility this conference implies.

“All right,” Muchami says, his brow furrowed. He’s reluctant to leave.

“It’s okay, Muchami.” Janaki looks brave. “We’ll be fine.”

He looks at the ground. “You’re a good girl, Janaki, a strong girl, smart girl. I know you will take good care of little Thangam. Poor Thangam.”

Janaki is slightly offended that Muchami sees her mother-and probably her father-just as she does. But she cannot sustain this feeling; she is still too much the little girl she was.

“Don’t worry, Muchami,” she insists. “I will look after her.”

He smiles slightly, bows and is gone.

Goli had appeared surprised to see his family, but he seems to be in a mood of regularity, going to the office every day and, better yet, coming home. He hasn’t made friends yet, Janaki thinks sourly. She looks at her mother and thinks of all she has suffered, feeling self-righteous and wishing she didn’t.

Janaki unpacks by leaving the bags and trunks open and letting Raghavan keep himself busy. She hangs the cuckoo clock-another of Goli’s caprices-and a calendar she brought from Cholapatti, showing an image of the goddess Saraswati, signified by her veena. A servant is arranged for cleaning; Thangam will cook. The rains are coming reliably now and the family, too, settles into a routine of sorts.

Navaratri is fast approaching and Janaki turns her thoughts happily, if uncertainly, to the festival: they are in a house entirely without dolls and with barely five or six deity portraits. Buying dolls the way Gayatri would is not an option: Janaki doesn’t want to ask her parents to pay and doesn’t think this qualifies as an emergency, so she can’t use the money her grandmother gave her.

As she sits on the veranda one morning, watching the rain and thinking on the doll question, Raghavan runs out to give her a murrukku, then trips and drops his own in a puddle. He howls briefly, then continues dunking the chickpea flour snack into the puddle until it is reduced to a sodden mess.

Janaki recalls making her family’s names in murrukku and smiles as an idea occurs to her. She fills a bowl with wheat flour, which they have in abundance and don’t much need. She mixes in some rice flour and blends it with water to make a dough. As she works beside the well, the rain clears up, and a timid sunshine leaks through the clouds.

From the paste, Janaki begins fashioning figures the height of her hand: a yogi, a teacher, a judge, laundryman, betel vendor, widow, farmer, iron-press man, priest, barber, soldier, rail signal man, mother, father, goddesses Meenakshi, Saraswati and Lalitha Parameshwari, a Sita, with Rama, Lakshmana and Hanuman, a Ganesha. As the homunculi dry, she paints details onto them with kohl, crushed leaves, tamarind, turmeric, lime and ink. She anoints them, where appropriate, with holy ash, sandal and vermilion, using a lightly frayed green neem stick as a brush.

Over a few days, a small village grows in their small hall, where Janaki has created a golu stand of seven shelves, made of bricks and boards left by some previous tenant. On the floor, she places pigs, crows, puppies, a policeman, a village idiot, a labourer, a vegetable vendor, a bulk goods vendor, a Muslim shopkeeper and four musicians. Two village women argue, two pound rice grains; two men nap in the street, and two fight over a goat. A baby gets a massage; a little girl plays hide-and-seek; a couple get married. Set in a little garden of her own, one naughty little girl eats some dirt. A calf and a young Lord Krishna watch over her in attitudes of adoration.

Raghavan plays with them all. Though he’s told to play gently, he breaks or loses a number of the figures. Janaki refashions them, not ungrateful for the extra demands on her time. The few neighbours who come nightly during the festival never fail to remark on the ingenious little village. The goddesses must certainly be pleased with Janaki, they tell her. Even more important for Janaki, Thangam is delighted. Janaki basks in her mother’s pleasure as the small figures’ industry, prosperity and cheer light the empty house.

The only gloom on their society of simple pleasures is cast by Goli. He goes out to work in the morning and returns in the evenings, giving them daytimes of freedom and evenings of trying to keep the baby quiet and out of his way. Goli does not remark on the doughy village within his residence, and Janaki thinks this is just as well. Thangam spends evenings sitting mute and inert in a corner. When neighbours come to pay visits, customary during this festival, Thangam greets them silently, while Janaki, trying to keep up appearances, offers refreshments on arrival, and a plate of turmeric, betel and vermilion as the ladies depart.

On the fifth day of the festival, a letter arrives from Sivakami. Janaki’s hands shake as she steams it open, her eyes welling. It has not been easy, staying with her parents. Janaki loves Thangam in intense and complicated ways, but she loves Sivakami with a love light and clear.

The letter says Vani is playing in a special Navaratri concert series on All India Radio, to be broadcast from Madras. Vani has, since they moved, played a few concerts in Madras. She will play on the radio on the sixth night of the festival-tomorrow. Janaki’s heart pounds and her mouth waters at the prospect of hearing her aunt. Sivakami says in the letter they must listen to the concert. Of course they must. Janaki will die if they don’t.

When her father returns from work, Janaki hands him the letter and watches his face. She finds herself comparing him with his wedding portrait, on the wall behind him. He has the same wavy jet hair and sharp button eyes, but looks less restless now, more intent, and lines have formed on his wide, square muzzle, like big apostrophes around everything that comes out of his mouth.

He snorts, bringing her to attention.

“Yes,” he says, “we must, we must hear your talented aunty.”

He has said what Janaki wanted to hear, even if the quote marks around it give it some irony she doesn’t understand. She scurries to prepare.

The first complication is that Munnur, where they are now stationed, is not electrified. Goli volunteers that his good friends in Konam, the closest town, own a radio and would be pleased to have them come and visit. The second complication is that the concert will run later than the last bus back to Munnur. They will stay overnight and catch the first bus at 3:30 a.m. The third is that some rule of Goli’s position forbids him to overnight anywhere outside of Munnur. Goli scoffs when Janaki timorously mentions this. Janaki, well trained in strategic deceit, emphasizes to those neighbours who visit that they will return by the last bus at night. No one from the village is ever out at night, anyhow. They hope that in the morning they will be able to sneak in without the more zealous housewives and busybodies seeing them.

Janaki is bustling happily and pauses to ask Thangam if they should bring a second extra set of clothes for Raghavan and whether Thangam needs a shawl for the early-morning trip back. Thangam doesn’t reply but rather looks on listlessly until Janaki stops, pursing her lips, and asks, “Akka?”

Thangam’s eyes slide away beneath papery blue eyelids. She draws in a quick breath and says, “You must go and enjoy. Vani plays beautiful music.”

“Akka, why, Akka?” Janaki is plaintive. “Why won’t you come?”

“You are a good girl.” Thangam reaches out. Her hands, which long ago were warm and golden-hued, are cold and blue-veined, white at the tips. She reaches out to lay her hands on Janaki’s head and then cracks her knuckles against her own temples.

“Chamutthu,” she says, to accompany this touching, absurd gesture, the older person abasing herself before the perfection of the younger. “Good girl.”

The gesture is commonplace-but not from Thangam. Janaki doesn’t recall having ever received a sign of affection from her mother. She has wanted such a touch so badly, for so long, that her head burns where her mother’s fingers stroked her. She feels small and close to tears.

In silence, Janaki prepares to go. Her mother plaits her hair tight and shiny, tying in the ribbons with gentle hands like dreams of alchemy and magic. In contrast, Sivakami’s hands, the few times she has done Janaki’s hair, felt rough, practical, reassuring.

Freshly pressed and dressed, in a half-sari made up of a snuff-brown silk paavaadai with cream-coloured davani, Janaki climbs into the bus behind her father. He had asked nothing when Thangam failed to accompany them out the door. But had he even noticed Janaki was there? The instant he drops into his seat, he falls asleep. Janaki, sitting in the aisle seat, watches him, his handsome head leaning against the algae-green rexine of the seat back. In sleep, she thinks, he looks smaller and less dangerous than he does alive. Oops-awake, I mean. Why is he like he is? Why can’t he just be nice?

Less than two bumpy hours later, they arrive in Konam. Goli springs to his feet so that Janaki flies out of his way. Left behind in the queue to disembark, she gets down off the bus and looks frantically for her father. He is making a purchase, a few feet from the door of the bus-ugly, overpriced dolls. “Navaratri dolls!” the vendor is shouting while wrapping and making change. “Beautiful for your golu! Buy them all!”

“Look but don’t buy,” Janaki has been trained by Sivakami; her father clearly has not. His policy seems to be “Buy but don’t look,” she smirks to herself, then rebukes herself smartly.

They ramble toward their host’s house, Goli buying sweets, flowers, magazines, generous with tips, generous with beggars. He keeps asking Janaki if she wants anything. She refuses mutely; he shrugs and buys more. He got paid the day before-Janaki had heard her parents arguing about whom he owes. The argument was short; Thangam fell silent as soon as he yelled.

Before they left the house, Thangam gave Janaki bus fare, which she tucked into the waist of her paavaadai.

They arrive at Goli’s friends’ house, a small bungalow set in a garden, a twenty-minute walk from the bus depot and market square, practically in the centre of town. Goli has not said how he knows these people.

They step over the threshold into the salon, a claustrophobic room crammed with several rattan-strung recliners, side tables with doilies, a mahogany display case full of dolls and the radio. While Gayatri and Minister’s radio stands about two feet, on a table in Minister’s upstairs salon, this one stands on the floor, almost four feet.

Janaki considers the radio the best invention ever. The gramophone she thinks a novelty item at best, though it brings music to those who are non-electrified and non-musical-because of course no machine can take the place of a veena and someone who knows how to play it. Tonight the radio will bring Vani herself, in all her mature genius. Oh, how Janaki has missed this music. Her fingertips throb, her forehead tingles, her heart is doing something akin to salivation as she waits to hear what she has heard so little in the two and a half years since Vani and Vairum moved to Madras. Before radio, only Vairum had the power to bring Vani and take her away.

Goli presents their hosts with dolls, sweets, flowers. The husband emits clucks of delight and dismissal. “Oh, you shouldn’t have!” His wife raises her eyebrows as if smiling. She isn’t. Janaki feels chilled. It has begun again to rain outside.

Goli and the husband sit in the chairs, Janaki in the little floor space remaining, close by the radio. The wife stands behind her husband. Goli does not let slip a single opportunity to remind his hosts of how closely he is related to tonight’s featured performer. The husband is impressed and excited. Janaki thinks maybe that little sneer mark to the right of her hostess’s nose is just the way the poor woman’s face is made. But when their daughter, who is about Janaki’s age, comes in to say good night, the mark dissolves in a face suffused with pride and love.

The daughter sees the guests and asks, “What are they here for?”

In Tamil it is polite to refer to people in the third person, but the girl’s tone is rude in any language. Her mother replies, “Their female relative is playing veena. On the radio.”

The girl raises her eyebrows and scrunches her lips. She returns to the other room.

Goli says, “I’m sure your daughter would love to stay and listen! She can sit with my daughter. Vani, my own sister-in-law, would be honoured.”

The sneer returns as their hostess explains, “We don’t approve of Brahmin women playing in public. We would never permit our daughter to listen to such a display.”

Her husband giggles as though in apology and leaps to switch on the radio, saying, “Not five minutes now! Best give it a chance to warm up!”

The radio’s initial whine and crackle always make Janaki shiver with excitement. Even her hostess, whom she now hates, cannot dampen the electric thrill. The whine thins, the crackle settles like a good fire, and a sombre voice announces: V. Vani.

At the sound of tuning, Janaki closes her eyes to all those around her. The musician is unmistakably her aunt. The program mixes adventurous and conservative choices, though even the best-known songs are made unfamiliar by her aunt’s rhythmic and stylistic innovations. Janaki keeps her eyes shut tight, listening for old favourites and for new songs she herself might learn.

Not bothering with an introductory varnam, Vani launches into an improvisational aalapanai in “Begada Raga,” and then segues into the recital proper with “Vallabha Nayakasya,” a meditative and richly emotional prayer to Lord Ganesha, god of new beginnings. Janaki recalls the little wooden Ganesha that Vairum used to keep in a lamp niche near the entrance of his and Vani’s quarters. Janaki never entered their room but would see the statuette when she climbed the stairs to the roof. The roughly carved little figure was shiny with age, its back blackened with lamp smoke. Once, Janaki, curious, picked it up and was surprised at how light it was. The tiny statue went with her uncle and aunt to Madras when they moved, and Janaki felt that this signified more than anything the permanence of their leave-taking.

The second song in Vani’s program is “Sakala Kala Vani,” a melodious, feminine piece with tightly shaped verses, a tribute to the goddess Saraswati, one of the triumvirate of female deities whose festival they were celebrating. She wraps up the first part of the concert with a song Janaki has never heard. The announcer gives the title, “Chinnan Cheeru Killiyai Kannama,” by Subramania Bharatiyar, whose name, at least, Janaki recognizes. He’s not one of the ancients, but rather a Tamil nationalist poet who died not long before Janaki was born-it was an accident, she thinks, involving an elephant, maybe? Janaki has heard of musicians, recently, setting Bharatiyar’s poetry to music. Listening to Vani now, she is intrigued and frustrated: each time she thinks she starts to get the raga, it seems to change. If Vani only lived with them still, Janaki would have heard her practicing. She might even have been able to play this piece by now.

She opens her eyes slowly. Her host is sitting rapt and respectful. His wife’s sneer has deepened. Possibly, to be kind to her, she is unable to appreciate what she has just heard. Goli is sticking to the line that he is related to a genius.

“Marvellous, wasn’t it? What virtuosity! What excellence of technique! To think, how many times have I heard her in the privacy of my mother-in-law’s village home. And here she is playing for the whole of the presidency more or less. Isn’t that something!” Then he stands, holding his palms together. “Well, we’d better make a move.”

Janaki starts.

Their hostess looks at her and speaks to Goli, “Oh, must you?”

Janaki stammers, “We can’t… the second half…” The announcer had told listeners to stay tuned through the interval-Vani would be playing “Jaggadodharana” on her return, one of her signature songs.

Goli turns on her. “Have some regard for your poor mother. She is home alone. If we stay, we will surely miss the last bus. Thangam will be worried to death.” He turns to their hosts. “My wife is expecting, you know. And, of course, with the demands of my position, it really is not advisable.”

The husband makes weak clucking noises to insist upon their staying, while his wife goes to fetch the vermilion to offer Janaki in farewell. Janaki tries something else.

“But… my grandmother will be very angry if we don’t listen to the whole thing.”

Goli’s eyes, which always shine unfathomably, flash.

Janaki heedlessly continues, “Akka will be okay. She’s not expecting us until morning…”

“Stop calling her Akka. She’s your mother.” Chop, chop, chop, hand against palm. “Don’t you care for her at all? Why are you telling me what your grandmother wants? Am I not your father?” He flashes his eyes at their motionless hosts and his voice modulates into a soothing tone, somehow more frightening even than his explosion. “I know I told her we would be home in the morning.” He smiles at Janaki as she shrinks from him. “We’ll surprise her.”

The lady of the house holds the silver plate of hospitality out to Janaki. Janaki, fuming, applies a vermilion smudge to her forehead and accepts the betel leaf.

It is better that they return that night, and Janaki knows it but doesn’t know why he had earlier insisted they would not. This move to return the same night is not out of character: the only rule to Goli’s behaviour appears to be that he does not keep his word.

Janaki dozes on the way home, the betel leaf crunched in her fist. Vani’s music steams in her dreams and when she lifts her lids and looks through the metal shutters half-closed against the rain, she glimpses the silver moon, full and bright beyond thick clouds. The rains beat on the bus roof and become the mridangam in her dreams.

Soon enough, they arrive in Munnur and duck and dodge from tree to eave toward the tiny house. Lamps flicker in the windows. Goli says, “See? I told you she’d be waiting up for us. Good thing we…

But Janaki knows Thangam wasn’t expecting them until morning, and quickens her pace against the flutter of anxiety in her chest.

They bang on the door and look through the window. Thangam lies on a cot and one of the neighbours, who is with her, comes to open the locks. She tells us she was called by another neighbour when Thangam started vomiting early in the evening.

The lamps’ golden glow cools and condenses as it reaches Thangam. Her brow is dewy. Father and daughter step across the threshold. Thangam opens her blue marble eyes, and Janaki’s fast-beating heart is in her mouth when her mother’s blue lips part: “If you had come in the morning, you would have beheld my dead body.”

If you had come in the morning, you would have beheld my dead body.

“I can’t hold on any longer. I’m too tired.” She convulses, lips slack, eyelids small knots, nostrils flaring and closing.

Janaki runs to her side, calling out to her. “Akka, come back, Akka, my mother.” Janaki tries to smooth her brow, but life pulsates under Thangam’s skin, weighed down by lumps and bricks and dreams of gold, life held under the cold blue surface.

Goli pulls Janaki away and lays a finger on Thangam’s shoulder. Immediately Thangam is still, as though the impulses have withdrawn, the way the touch-me-not plant closes its leaves on contact. She is still, except for a decorous, defiant throb at wrist and neck, and another life, in her belly, which kicks to be free of her.

Goli demands, diagnostically, “Too tired? Too tired how?”

No response. Raghavan sleeps on a blanket, snug and dry between three spots where rain drips through the roof. Goli swivels toward the two neighbours and begins shouting at them.

“What’s going on? How long has she been sick like this?”

One tries to say what she knows, what she has seen, but Goli is pacing and muttering, every now and again returning to Thangam’s prone form to say her name, “Thangam! Thangam. Thangam?” until he begins to wind down, like a gramophone record. Finally, he, too, is still. Above and around them is the chaos of the crashing rain. Janaki watches her father. For the first time that she can recall, he is still and present.

He looks at Thangam, a long time, and then he begins to speak. “Thangam? You look so different, Thangam. When did you change? You were once so beautiful. This small house, it’s a mistake. My small salary, it is all the government bastards would give me. That’s why I was always trying to do more, Thangam, to get more money, so you could have a big house. A comfortable life. This is… this is a mistake.”

He backs away from her, toward a far corner where he unrolls a mat, lies down and soon falls asleep.

One tear draws down from each of Thangam’s closed eyes. The rain begins to leak through the roof in a fourth place.

Janaki turns to one of the neighbours. “Mami, you must tell my grandmother. Please, my grandmother. She must come.”

Ifyou had come in the morning, you would have beheld my dead body.

Oh no.

“I need my grandmother, please.” Janaki gets the cash her grandmother gave her and holds it out. “Can someone go?”

The kind neighbours assure her, yes; one says she will send her grown son.

Janaki sits beside her mother through the night. She presses Thangam’s legs and arms, rubs warmth into them, until the chill breaks and fever burns through her brightly. Janaki soaks a cloth with rainwater and lays it across Thangam’s forehead, but the chill soon returns and Janaki resumes the rubbing. All the while, she speaks encouraging words. “Akka, you must hang on. Amma is coming. Amma is coming and everything will be fine, but you must hang on and see her.”

A leak springs above the dough village but Janaki makes no attempt to move her creatures, and from top to bottom they melt, sometimes in a slow bending, sometimes in a sudden collapse, until, as morning nears, the seven shelves are coated in a cold lava strung with puddlings of colour that were once red lips and emerald earrings, dark hair and cheery skirts.

An hour before dawn, the young man returns. He had gone to the next village and had a telegram sent-as quick as going himself, and less costly. Janaki knows her grandmother forbids telegrams for any but the worst news. She had forgotten to tell the young man. Anyway, this may not be the worst news, but it is close. He gives her the change.

In the morning, when her father rises, Janaki prepares coffee. She is a terrible cook, and her father makes a face as he swallows. Oh, well. She takes the second steaming tumbler, holds it beside her mother and blows the vapours toward her, hoping that miraculous scent of richness, vigour and future unexceptional mornings will rouse her. It doesn’t. Maybe the coffee is too weak; maybe Thangam is. Janaki keeps whispering in her mother’s ear, as she has all night, “Amma is coming, Akka. Amma is coming, just hold on.” She takes heart from the fact that Thangam has hung on, so far. Goli, saying nothing, goes to work.

On Tuesdays and Fridays, girls have oil baths. Today Janaki must administer her own, for the first time ever. She sniffs a little with self-pity as she works the oil through her hair as best she can, and goes to rub it out with soap-nut powder in the bath, leaving Raghavan and her mother under a neighbour’s watch.

She comes back into the main hall, holding both ends of the thin cotton towel and snapping it against her hair, from neck to waist, then binding the hair into the towel so that it makes a knot the size of three hearts at the nape of her neck. She and her sisters certainly have been blessed with hair, she most of all.

Thangam is lying waxen and small on her cot, burning again with the fever.

Raghavan awakens and wants his mother. Janaki consoles him, giving him sweet milk, bathing him and singing “Jaggadodharana,” with its lyrics about Lord Krishna: His motherplays with him, as though he is no more than her precious child. It is raining too hard to go outside. They play with pots and pans and two of the dolls their father bought. Janaki makes as much noise as he does. She wants their mother to hear them playing.

The servant comes to sweep and mop, quiet and fearful. When she leaves, Janaki breathes, relief: morning is past and Thangam is still alive. If she can just hold on until evening-they’re only five hours from Cholapatti, so Sivakami should be here by what, five or six?

She removes the towel and mechanically binds just the ends of her hair, which is now so little damp it feels not so much wet as heavy. The small knot hits the back of her thighs, the hair loose enough to finish drying, but not unbound, since a woman’s hair should never be unbound except when she performs her parents’ funeral rites. “The sight of a woman with unbound hair strikes sadness into all hearts,” Sivakami, very strict in this regard, would say.

Janaki scrapes the doughy mass that was the golu into some newspapers and tosses it out behind the house. The neighbour comes, brings food and plays with Raghavan. Janaki again makes sure they do it close to Thangam. They unshroud the gramophone and play each record three times. The laughing one sounds stranger each time: at first it sounds eerie, the second time as if it’s mocking them. By the third playing, it doesn’t even sound like laughter any more.

The neighbour leaves to prepare her family’s tiffin. Janaki isn’t hungry but feeds Raghavan. She sits by her mother and sings the first two songs from last night’s concert, which feels so long ago. She tries to hum “Chinnan Cheeru Killiyai Kannama” but can’t remember how it goes. The baby inside Thangam seems to wake, kicking and swimming.

Five o’clock, six o’clock, seven o’clock… the cuckoo, which Janaki is coming to hate, pops out each hour to announce to her that her grandmother still has not come.

Thangam is breathing but not moving. She looks bluer and bluer, or is that the fallen night? Janaki lights a lamp for warmth.

There is a knock. She leaps and unbolts the door, but it’s her father. He thrusts a paper packet into her hand. “Here.”

Veeboothi-he must have passed a temple on his rounds. Janaki carries it to Thangam, smears it on her forehead, throat and belly, and puts a pinch between her lips. Previously, it would have shown grey against gold; now it merely dulls the waxy blue surface of Thangam’s skin. Janaki rubs it in but the ash resolves into nubbins and disperses into flakes, refusing to absorb.

Janaki serves her father the food the neighbour has brought. For a second unending, undying night, Janaki sits beside her mother. She prays without ceasing, saying Shakti Mata, Durga Mata, Saraswati whose names are Uma, Vani, Saradha and nine hundred and ninety-eight more. Bring me my grandmother, oh don’t let my mother die. She looks at the Saraswati calendar she hung on the wall, the face of the goddess sweet and impartial.

She presses her mother’s legs, holds her hand and strokes her forehead while her father sleeps. Her little brother sleeps, his golden eyes shut tight. She doesn’t know why Amma has not come. She fears she has been abandoned. She fears the rain rain rain has washed the world away, washed the universe clean, shining, empty. All the people she loves, all those she doesn’t love, all washed away. Are they all alone, too, waiting for one another? Are they all together, waiting for her? Is she late and are they wondering what is keeping her? Has the rain washed her away, too, clean and empty, no guilt no ambition no short history of minor transgressions no unwanted wisdom left to pollute her and tear her gently limb from limb?

They are nine who issued from this womb that is even now still pulsing, poking and bumping, though not as much as before-the stubbornness, the wilfulness, perhaps diminishing. They are nine, and those kicks are of the tenth, but Janaki is sitting alone with only the soft whistle of her brother’s nose to remind her that there are others too who will be orphaned to the world in the swirling raining dark.

But dark always turns to light and it does this time, too. The rain stops; morning breaks grey and awful. Janaki does not move. Her mother is still; her father is still sleeping.

SIVAKAMI DIDN’T GO TO HEAR VANI’S RADIO CONCERT, but the children did, at Gayatri and Minister’s house. That night, though, the sixth of the Navaratri festival, Sivakami didn’t sleep at all. She rarely sleeps much, but the first couple of nights of the festival had been good and tired her out. From the third night, though, she had been waking with feelings of dread and finally, this night, couldn’t muster the will to sleep. For the first time ever, she made mistakes in her beading, giving a poor cow five eyes before she realized what she had done.

Muchami arrived at 3:45, as every morning, and they walked to the Kaveri, where, as always, she bathed in the dark while he stood guard. This morning, as happens sometimes, she was accompanied at the river by a slim figure in diaphanous white, not unlike her own. It floated above the opposite bank, bobbing a bit like a current or breeze. The first time it happened, thirty years ago, she had asked Muchami who it was. “Probably Mariamman,” he had shrugged. Sivakami normally takes comfort in the village goddess’s presence, though she thinks she shouldn‘t, since these Dravidian deities are generally malicious. The goddess had, however, meant no harm before this-or not succeeded in causing any. Why was Sivakami unsettled by her on this day?

At the house, she hung up her wet garment and readied her brass pot and travelling bundle in dread certainty.

This is the thirty-fourth year since the marriage of the girl of gold, the year the astrologers foretold for her death, and when the telegram came, Sivakami didn’t wail or gnash.

THANGAM MAMI SERIOUS STOP COME AT ONCE STOP

The first births added years to Thangam’s life, the astrologers had told Sivakami. The last births took them off again.

Sivakami took the telegram and walked the half-furlong to Gayatri’s house. It must have been more than thirty years since she had walked on the street of the Brahmin quarter in daylight. Her feet felt detached, her body bobbing lightly above them, floating diaphanous white.

Minister read the telegram, set about replying, organized the journey. Muchami assisted. Sivakami returned home to awaken Laddu, Kamalam, Radhai, Krishnan and Sita, who was seven months pregnant and home for her bangle ceremony, to what might be the worst day of their young lives. On the way home, she encountered Rukmini, doing her kolam, and told her to prepare to travel.

By mid-morning, the party boarded the train. Muchami was made to stay behind for the sake of matters quotidian. On the platform, as the train gathered speed, he raised his face and, with the force of his eyes, gazed them safely out of the station.

They rocked silently in the carriage, all faintly nauseated. The atmosphere was so moist they felt they could chew it to slake their throats. Ten minutes out of Salem, the turgid air exploded into drops, stinging their warm faces like forgiveness as they shut the windows against the storm.

The closer they got to Munnur, the stronger the rain. Dismounting in the little station, they found the earth around the unsheltered platform eroded into sharp cliffs descending to choppy brown seas. They waited while Minister inquired of the station master, a droopy little man in a cubicle, where they might find the revenue inspector’s home. He seemed at first reluctant to divulge directions, and Minister suspected him of being involved in one of Goli’s schemes, holding a grudge or wanting to protect him. Then he realized that the station master was simply worried about their ability to negotiate the passage, which would involve walking about four furlongs, crossing the river and walking another furlong on the other side. With some relief, Minister dismissed the man’s worries and set out, lifting the smaller children down from the platform and hurrying everyone up the flooded roadway, all the children’s hands grasped tight. It was soon clear that the man’s fears were justified, but, by a hundred yards, the rain descending like screens, the water filling their eyes, they could barely make out the station behind them and so pressed forward to the river, where they paused on her banks in respect and dismay.

The Kaveri was swollen and rough and in a lethal mood. It was mid-afternoon but even with the light at its highest, the streaming rain obscured the opposite bank. Minister, feeling valiant, made as though he would swim across, but Sivakami forbade it. Even in calm moods, this river made sport of men in the prime of their lives. Sivakami herded them into some bankside groves to shelter.

Curious villagers ventured forth and expressed sorrow when they learned of the circumstances. They were not so irreverent as to offer the travellers their homes-this was the non-Brahmin side of the village-but they brought sheets of thatch to shelter them and fruits Brahmins may eat without fear of pollution. The villagers told the party that the rain would clear by morning, when they would be able to cross by parasal, a round boat towed by swimmers.

Within an hour, Visalam arrived from Karoor with her baby and husband. The sympathetic villagers clucked and cooed and set up a baby hammock between some bamboo stalks, with a waterproof crosshatch of thatch to protect the child from the elements.

Just before dark, Saradha came from Thiruchinapalli. After midnight, the rain ceased and the sky began to thin. The moon, thought Sivakami, was weak from crying. She shook the thought off disdainfully. She alone was awake in the party to recognize the stooped and purposeful gait of her son approaching on the riverlike road, Vani glowing beside him. Now Sivakami’s tears began to fall, hard as the rain, from both eyes. Vairum and Vani approached, and Vani fell to embrace Sivakami’s feet. Sivakami put her hands on Vani’s shoulders and raised her into an embrace. Vairum said nothing but waited to speak until his mother’s eyes were dry, the tears wiped away by Vani.

“I have spoken to several villagers,” he said then, soft and brusque. “I believe we must wait until morning to cross.”

Vani pressed Sivakami’s hands and Sivakami leaned her forehead against that of her son’s wife. They waited for the dawn.

Before dawn, all did their ablutions, the men saying the daily prayer for illumination, and then light broke saffron in the east. Six village men appeared, carrying a round, shallow boat of woven reeds, which they held at the river’s edge. Sivakami, Minister and Laddu got in. Laddu tried to insist he would swim, but Vairum forbade it. When the village men tied gourds around their waists as life preservers, though, Vairum and Sita’s husband did the same, and took places at the boat’s side as they began towing the boat across. By the time the sun laid its palms on the water’s surface, the first party was halfway across.

Through her fear, Sivakami wondered where Vairum learned to swim so well. She had made him pledge, when he left for college, that he would never swim in the Kaveri. She didn’t need to ask him to study, to be frugal, to eschew bad habits. Vairum rose on the other bank, braced his hands on his knees and coughed. He turned toward Thangam’s house. At least there are no predictions against his life, Sivakami thought. None that I know of.

Yesterday, Janaki had not felt the day on her face except in the hour before dawn when she did the kolam that the rain washed away even as the powder descended from her fist. Today she does not do kolam but opens the door only after the light is full. And opens her eyes wide because Laddu is running toward her up the road. He pants the news out hoarsely: “We are here, we are all here, we couldn’t cross the river yesterday evening, too flooded, we had to wait for light…” His hands are on his knees as he stoops to catch his breath. “Parasals-they are bringing the others across.”

Next comes Vairum. He strides first to the doorway where she is standing, her hair loose around her. Vairum goes past her into the house and looks at his sister lying blue on the cot, her womb an expectant silence.

Goli sits up in the spot where he has been sleeping, his forehead in his hands, cradling his big dreams. He looks up to see his wife’s brother. He puts his head back in his hands.

Vairum runs back up the road without a word to them. He passes his mother and tells her, “She is there-go up the road, you will see the house. I’m going to fetch help.”

He swims back across with the parasal, faster than riding in it. The villagers take a collective step back as he ascends the bank before them like a minor god and sets off in the direction of the rail station.

Sivakami places her feet carefully in the streaming road. She looks up to see where she must go and staggers, firebursts of fear in her tired eyes: here is Kali, goddess of destruction, her hair loose and rising about her, mouth open-Kali, running on water, bounding death.

No, it’s Janaki. Just a little girl, helpless and scared, her hair streaming. What is she, after all, just fourteen? Fourteen years old. She is crying with sadness because her mother is dying, and with relief, even joy, because now she can say so. The world still exists; they didn’t abandon her.

Her loose hair is stuck to her face and as Sivakami clears it from her mouth, Janaki suddenly becomes conscious of it and binds the ends together. Sivakami squeezes Janaki’s arms, pats her back. They walk back together, Janaki holding her grandmother’s arm. Once, Sivakami slips on the sliding invisible earth and Janaki steadies her.

Sivakami knows none of the people in the house, but she does not resent them. Sickness always draws a crowd. A pathway through the mass appears for her and at its end, the waxy blue figure of her daughter. Sivakami strokes Thangam’s cheeks as though drawing out sadness, kisses her fingers where they touched her daughter and asks, “Enn’idhu, kanna?”

What is it, dear one? What brought you to this pass?

Janaki moves to a corner and slumps down, cradled by two walls and the floor. She thinks her grandmother and mother, alone in the nattering crowd, look like an island in the Kaveri, a still, holy place in the mad rushing river. Her neck softens and she drops into sleep.

Some three hours later, a beefy white face appears in the door. Everyone stops talking. Many are trying to remember whether they owe taxes.

But he is not a revenue officer, he is the district medical officer whom Vairum has fetched, along with two junior doctors to assist. Three white doctors, everyone whispers. This is the kind of influence Vairum exerts now. Such doctors come with strings attached: Vairum has evidently pulled some.

The DMO asks that everyone clear out. They laugh at his excellent Tamil and go, except Sivakami, who refuses to leave her daughter alone with these strange men. She resists efforts at persuasion, saying, “I know: they are doctors. They are good men, and they have come a great distance, but anything they have to do, they can do in my presence.”

Vairum takes her aside and explains to her that she is an ignorant woman and the doctors need freedom to work. Sivakami says nothing, her lips set as tight as if sealed with wax, and finally, for the first time, his logic and will are bettered by her determination.

The DMO nods, impatient. “It’s fine, sir, please. I can do the work with the lady present, as long as she doesn’t interfere. I quite understand.” He waves Vairum out the door.

Several neighbours try to rouse Janaki to come out with them. She resists unconsciously. Her eyelids twitch and she mumbles but does not awaken. They shake her, speak gently, then fiercely, until Sivakami says, “Leave her. She’s not in the way.” She looks to the DMO, her ally. He nods resignedly. So Janaki remains, a crumpled pile of hair and clothes, in the corner.

The nurse from up the road arrives, looking very hastily washed and combed, though it is approaching eleven o’clock. Her lethargy is legendary. Vairum had rapped on her door and called for her as he and the doctors waded up the road from the crossing point: the DMO had asked for a nurse and she is the only one, locally.

The DMO asks Sivakami to put some water on to boil. She does, compliant but suspicious, as the nurse, shaking her head, closes the bottoms of the shutters against the many who watch unashamedly from without. The DMO checks Thangam’s pulse again and turns apologetically to Sivakami to explain, in his blocky, grammatical Tamil, “I must now check on the baby. I, have, concerns.”

Sivakami squints in incomprehension then closes her eyes when she understands. No one in their family has ever been seen by a doctor. She knows there are woman doctors for women patients, but it’s too late to get one. She knows she cannot interfere and knows it doesn’t matter, that Thangam will not have to account for this loss of modesty.

The DMO checks: there is no sign of dilation. The instruments are boiled. He performs a Caesarean.

A girl. Big. Blue. Dead. Gently and with regret, they hand her to her grandmother. The child’s blue lips are sealed stubborn and resistant in a frozen face. Sivakami looks deep into the lost eyes of her daughter’s last child. She thinks she sees a gold band around the pupil narrow, fade to blue, and then to black. Sivakami carries the baby out the back of the tiny house.

After sewing Thangam up, the DMO palpates her throat, feels her forehead, opens her eyelids one at a time and looks into her eyes. He feels she is far away, already. He looks up at Sivakami and asks, “How many children does she have?”

“She has nine children, and five grandchildren.”

“How can it be?” he murmurs, as if kind and gallant. “She looks so young.”

But when he looks back at her, she looks very old. He blinks to clear a film and again she looks terribly young. Tragic, these people. He lifts her lids again and again checks the pulse at her wrist. He is buying time. The other two doctors are waiting for orders.

He says to Sivakami, “I will try,” and reaches for a phial and a needle.

But he is lying. Her illness is serious and, as far as he knows, unnamed. He looks at his eager assistants, who are waiting for some instruction. He believes there is nothing he can do and believes the wee widow watching him knows this, too.

In his professional opinion, he needs to inoculate this dying woman with faith. He is a skeptical Christian but understands these people have their ways. He shakes the phial of saline and tries to think of it as liquid faith. It could work, in this country where so much happens that he cannot explain. He shakes the bottle faster, willing a catalysis within the worthless liquid, imbuing it with that chthonic quantity this woman needs to live. He shakes and shakes-the junior doctors are looking puzzled-shakes-he doesn’t look at Sivakami’s careworn face-shakes-he maintains a look of diagnostic concentration-shakes.

Chime! The clock rings out. The cuckoo pops. One o’clock. The phial takes flight, out of the DMO’s hand, between the inclined heads of the neatly groomed junior doctors, to shatter against the picture of the goddess Saraswati on the wall calendar beside the window.

Janaki sits bolt upright from sleep. She hears her mother make a rattling growl.

Then Thangam is dead.

The tall white doctor opens the door and walks outside, and leans his forehead against a palm. Those who saw him claimed he cried a little, but that makes no sense.

The others cry, then, except Sivakami. She hears the wails of her grandchildren rise and fall in waves. She sees Janaki lower her head in the corner and recognizes, with a stab, that while joy can be shared, grief must be borne alone. She hears little Raghavan begin screaming and thinks, He must be frightened. She hears Murthy, gasping, “Gold. She was our pure gold, and we have lost her.”

Sivakami goes to the back to bathe, dousing herself with water head to toe, as one must when a relative dies. As the others follow, she helps the nurse to tidy the room. She wipes the liquid from the face of the goddess of wisdom and music. It looks like tears, or like rosewater sprinkled in worship. Could that elixir have saved Thangam? Doubtful. Sivakami has little faith in medicine. No faith in that stuff she wipes from Saraswati’s cheeks and the crumbling wall and the rain-damp floor.