The Toss Of A Lemon Part 33

Just because Sita said it, Janaki feels compelled to disagree. Privately, though, she fears Sita intuits malignancy all too accurately.

WHAT A STRANGE FEW MONTHS this has been for our dear ones on the Brahmin quarter, Sivakami thinks, a couple of months later. January is drawing in, with the Pongal holiday. They won't celebrate this festival, nor any other, for a year, while they are in mourning.

In September, Thangam's death. Then, last month, Gayatri's mother-in-law had decided someone had hidden a cobra in her bun, and tried to use the scythe to cut off her hair. She killed herself-not as quickly as would have been merciful, but still, it was a relief to the family and probably to the old woman herself, who had for years been living in an increasing state of paranoia.

And now Rukmini is ill. She has been suffering from a severe digestive affliction since about the time Murthy's cousins came to stay with them. At first, it had seemed no more than heartburn. Rukmini confided in Sivakami: she feared her cousin-in-law's cooking didn't agree with her. The cousin was helping in the kitchen. Her cooking tasted wonderful, and it was nice to eat someone else's food. The cousin cooked Thanjavur-style, and the flavours were quite exotic. But Rukmini had grown scared of eating. She was mystified. The vegetables were not undercooked. She was being served items in the correct order. She had worried that perhaps the cousin-in-law was violating rules of ecchel, the contamination of saliva, and patthu, the contamination of cooked food, which orthodox Brahmins observe strictly. What if she was insufficiently superst.i.tious, one of these progressive sorts, and so was not was.h.i.+ng her hands after touching cooked rice, for instance? But the cook, who watched her, said she was quite above board. And no one else in the household was in any discomfort. Rukmini's stomach alone bloated and kicked after every meal.

And it grew large: it was only when Sivakami began noticing Rukmini's tummy that she inquired. Rukmini had been a st.u.r.dy woman, with the flat stomach and well-proportioned hips that are the preserve of childless women. Now she has grown considerably thinner, though her tummy has inflated like a rubber tire.

When Sivakami told Rukmini she was not looking well, Rukmini didn't understand, because saying someone has grown thin is also used as a formality, a greeting, to show concern. So it took a few tries before Sivakami could make clear that she genuinely thought Rukmini was looking very thin and that her swelling stomach might be a cause for concern. She asked if, perhaps, Rukmini could, after all these years, be pregnant. Rukmini laughed and blushed, clapped her cheeks and made slapping motions in the air with her hands.

"No, no," she said, "I'm not pregnant. Really, the thought!" She lowered her voice to a whisper. "You remember, Janaki came to help me just two weeks ago-I still get my monthlies."

Sivakami shrugged. "Sometimes-rarely, but I've heard of it-women get their periods even when they're pregnant. Or at least bleed a little."

"Possibly," Rukmini said politely, "but I really don't think I'm pregnant. I don't feel any different. Just a bit weak, maybe."

Sivakami gave her some holy ash from Palani mountain, known for its potency in expelling unwanted foreign bodies while strengthening desirable ones. She also told Rukmini to drink a broth nightly of her brother Venketu's patented Cure-All ConcentrateTM, as a purgative and blood-thickener. She had many extra jars, since Venketu's wife sent a care package of their products every time a granddaughter came to Sivakami's house to give birth.

Sivakami also advised Rukmini to take doses of their gripe water, since she had developed a terrible gas problem. Sometimes Sivakami herself would hear, from within her own house, Rukmini's prodigiously windy emissions. Neighbourhood children shamelessly imitated the poor woman's range of belches and farts. The sound rose even above the wash of the ca.n.a.l.

Rukmini conscientiously followed every prescription, but her misery did not abate. Her tummy was hard to the touch. She looked like a dying willow with a parasitic fungus clinging to its trunk.

As if all this weren't hard enough on a woman's vanity, Rukmini's hair began coming out in handfuls. Rukmini's hair had always been a bit thin, and she owned a couple of hairpieces, for special occasions. Now her own measly strands were barely sufficient to hold them on. Finally, she was reduced to sheltering her pate under her sari end, like a widow or Muslim. She was misery incarnate. Her only joy was Krishnan.

So Sivakami's heart burned at the thought of tearing Krishnan from Rukmini's bony bosom. How could she? How could she not?

Three nights running, Sivakami has awoken from the same dream, her heart thrumming and brow running with it, clear and cryptic as a telegram.

In the dream, Rukmini's long-dead mother-in-law, Annam, looked at an ill.u.s.trated catalogue of hairpieces. The pieces kept trying to scurry away off the pages and into the scrub. The mother-in-law seemed to be charged with minding them, though she would occasionally pick one up and tug at it until it loosened a bit and then study it, flattening it or holding it up to the sun, making the hairpiece whimper or shriek.

Sivakami was puzzled: Annam was a widow when she died, and so she appeared in the dream, with a head stubbly as a coconut. A widow has no need or use for hairpieces. Annam replied that soon her daughter-in-law would come and take the hair from her stomach. Oh, said Sivakami. So Rukmini's stomach is full of hair? Yes, said Annam, she will come and take the hair from her stomach and fas.h.i.+on it into hairpieces.

Sivakami tried reason, the worst tactic one can attempt in a dream. "But why would Rukmini make hairpieces?"

"If my daughter-in-law is dead, she will not get my son's money," Murthy's mother explains. "She will need some income, so she will have to make hairpieces to sell."

"Who will get your son's money, then?" asked Sivakami. This was not reason, but curiosity: if she had been awake, she might have asked what use a dead woman has for money.

"Our grandson," the woman replied.

Halfway between wake and sleeping, she felt dread. In that dream voice that takes all the effort of shouting, Sivakami argued, "You have no grandson."

"Oh," said Rukmini's mother-in-law, "we have a grandson, you and I."

Here Sivakami really woke, gasping as though breathing through cobwebs. She didn't discuss this with Muchami on the way to or from her bath, but finally, three days later, they talked. Muchami had heard of a poison that causes a big ball to grow in the stomach and long hairs to grow from it, until the victim's life is crowded from her belly. They admit between them that they fear Rukmini's cousins are poisoning her to get her husband's house and possibly his money. They admit, shaking, that if the cousins consider him a threat, Krishnan may be poisoned next. They must remove him from that house.

That morning, Sivakami dispatches Janaki and Kamalam to fetch their little brother to eat pazhiah sadam at home. As he eats, she examines his stomach for signs of swelling, but Krishnan's shorts look as baggy as ever. She asks, "Have you had stomach aches lately, Krishnan-baby?"

Krishnan furrows his brow-is this is a trick to get him to take an extra dose of castor oil? Sivakami grunts in such a way as not to make him more suspicious, and says nothing more.

While Krishnan is eating, however, Muchami slips next door to have a conference with Murthy, and when Krishnan goes back next door, Rukmini wails, "Go home, kanna! You don't live here, you don't belong here, we don't want you."

Krishnan stands still, confused, not only because Rukmini is shouting all this, each phrase louder than the last, but because she has fallen to her knees and embraced him, so he couldn't move even if he wanted to.

Janaki and Kamalam appear, having been instructed by their grandmother to come and bring their little brother home again. He looks over his shoulder, sees them and flings his arms around Rukmini's neck, howling, "I won't go!"

Janaki starts to cry-she cannot do this, not so soon after Thangam's death. She leans against a wall, tears coursing from unblinking eyes. Kamalam, silent and alarmed, takes her elder sister by the hand and the shoulder and leads her home.

Three rooms away, in the courtyard, Murthy's cousins half-pretend they don't know what is happening. Murthy tears his hair quietly on the veranda, waiting to accuse his cousin once Krishnan is safely out of the picture. What a sorry state the world is in, he tells Sivakami later, thanking her for having sent Muchami with that alert, when one trusts a servant over one's flesh and blood.

Finally Rukmini tries to thrust Krishnan from her. His little hands pinch and scrabble and he starts again to yell, but Rukmini eventually pins his arms to his sides, kisses every feature of his face and runs from the room, her stomach visible on either side of her.

Krishnan tries to follow, but she closes a door against him. Sita arrives within minutes, with Muchami, who carries Krishnan home.

The cousins object when confronted, denying that they have done anything, saying the accusations are outrageous. Then they steal away in the night, more outlaws than in-laws.

It would have been safe then for Krishnan to return. Certainly, he tries it, meekly. He and Rukmini have visits, but Muchami and Murthy don't face protests when they carry him home each dusk. Over the next six weeks, Rukmini grows gaunt. Her stomach, though it grows no bigger, becomes painful. For the final ten days of her illness, she is confined to bed, able to take nothing but a little water. Then she, too, expires.

Circ.u.mstances being suspect, Rukmini is made to submit in death to the doctor's examination she refused in life. Cause of death is listed as cancer of the stomach, but in fact, the doctor has never seen a growth like this one-a wrinkled tumour, like a mammoth brain, but from it grow long, matted hairs, five feet long in places. He considers removing it for research-maybe he could write a paper?-but concludes the tropics have robbed him of his professional ambition-he has no desire to take the trouble of preserving and a.n.a.lyzing it. It is a curiosity, but it is not going to make him famous. It is too bizarre for that-just a bit of a novelty. He sews the woman's stomach up, the flaps baggy over the deflated cavern, and sends word that the family may have her back for her funeral.

Surely little Krishnan must have done something very bad in a previous life, Sivakami thinks, the night after Rukmini's funeral, watching the child sleep between his elder sisters. How else could it be that a child never really knows a mother at all and yet loses not one mother but two? It's a riddle fit for G.o.ds, who are fond of perversity.

She thinks back on the scandals she has been witness to in these months and wonders, trying to keep herself from feeling prurient, how many there have been on the Brahmin quarter that she doesn't know about. She wonders why she works so hard to keep up appearances-surely everyone's family has misfortunes. Surely they are nothing to be ashamed of. She doesn't condemn either Minister or Murthy for having madness and criminality in their families, but if she didn't know them better, she might. She might wonder if these traits would rear their ugly heads in others among their families. Say if she was considering a bride or groom from a family within which lurked such shadows.

This, of course, is why she has invested such energy and effort in keeping the facade of her family stainless. Thank G.o.d no scandal has enmeshed them yet, though she often senses a circling threat. Goli's behaviour is so unpredictable; Vairum's beliefs are so unconventional. It's just my imagination It's just my imagination, she tells herself. They would never do anything to hurt the children. Well, Vairum wouldn't. And Goli would never hurt them deliberately ... They would never do anything to hurt the children. Well, Vairum wouldn't. And Goli would never hurt them deliberately ...

She looks at the children, as blameless and earnest in sleep as in waking, and says a quick prayer to her G.o.ds against the evil eye: please let it remain so. Thangam's children's futures are precarious as it is. Sivakami is their only guarantor and all she can give them is their reputations.

A Suitable Girl 1941-1942.

WITH THE LONG, DARK YEAR OF MOURNING finally ended, Janaki becomes eligible for marriage. Horoscopes begin arriving, but Vairum insists that Sivakami disregard them. Every marriage begets another, as the saying goes, and it takes only one such function for Vairum to target a family he considers suitable: relatives of Vani's who live in her hometown, Pandiyoor, a market town close to the city of Madurai, some seventy miles south and inland from Cholapatti.

Closely related to Vani, and distantly to Gayatri, they are a grand and wealthy family. The eligible son is the youngest of three boys; there are also three daughters, all married and well-off. Vairum has a long-standing casual acquaintance with the father.

Sivakami does not see how this is going to work. It's well and good for Vairum to say he has no truck with astrology-he has always had strange notions and she has never been able to influence him-but, she asks him timidly, what sort of a family would marry their child off without the advice of the ancient science?

"It's not a science." Vairum is as brusque with Sivakami as she is gentle with him, as dismissive as she is credulous. "It's inexact and manipulative. I won't consider any family who can't recognize that."

Sivakami withdraws, suitably cowed. Astrology has brought her misery her whole life-she's not going to argue further for it. She has no doubt it will be operative, no matter what Vairum does, but maybe, for once, she would rather not know the future.

Vairum doesn't bother explaining that he doesn't yet know if this family is as willing as he to undertake a modern marriage. One of his reasons for targeting prospects above the middle cla.s.s is that the upper echelons tend to be more sophisticated in such matters. The family's elder sons work as lawyers-they employ reason and logic, even in highly emotional circ.u.mstances. This detail, he thinks, bodes well.

But how to handle protocol when the usual formalities are so pointedly not to be observed? Vairum is a man of forethought and has considered this. The matching of horoscopes is the primary method his community uses to arrange marriage, but the Laws of Manu the Laws of Manu describe others: kidnapping, for instance, trickery, sorcery. Vairum opts for enticement, targeting the boy's mother, a formidable aesthete and lover of the intellectual arts, a woman who Vairum guessed might appreciate those virtues Janaki has so consistently cultivated. He need only find or create the means to display her in all her eminent suitability describe others: kidnapping, for instance, trickery, sorcery. Vairum opts for enticement, targeting the boy's mother, a formidable aesthete and lover of the intellectual arts, a woman who Vairum guessed might appreciate those virtues Janaki has so consistently cultivated. He need only find or create the means to display her in all her eminent suitability He suspects an opportunity will arise before long. The daughters of the Pandiyoor household are gadabouts and use any excuse to travel for functions. In November, he hears from Vani that they will come to Cholapatti to celebrate Gayatri's granddaughter's first birthday, and he hastens from Madras to brief his mother and Gayatri.

"Concocting such a womanish scheme," Gayatri marvels to Sivakami in a rare pause for breath amidst her preparations for the function. "Who would have suspected him capable?"

Sivakami doesn't respond, and Gayatri rea.s.sures her.

"I think it's wonderful, Sivakami Akka. I have met this boy, Baskaran. He is a nice boy, very devoted to his parents."

"Hm." Sivakami feels she needs more information. "Is he a college graduate?"

Gayatri raises her eyebrows. "I suppose not." She purses her lips and continues. "What I have heard is that Baskaran completed his second year at American College in Madurai. He is an intelligent boy. But then his grandfather died, and his father became sad, it's understandable. He was having difficulty managing at home, and so on. The father, Dhoraisamy, had inherited the responsibility for a charitable foundation his uncle... ?" Gayatri pauses, frowning. "Maybe his father? Someone established this charity-I don't remember. But there is a paadasaalai and a chattram, and Dhoraisamy now is the in-charge of managing them. The elder sons work as lawyers, perhaps they are too busy or not so interested in family affairs. So Baskaran stayed home and helped. He is very devoted to his parents."

Sivakami is not in a mood to discuss her reservations, and Gayatri leaves soon afterward, clearly hoping she has not said anything to contravene the match.

Sivakami broods. So many Brahmin families have lost their properties in the last thirty years, including many on their own Brahmin quarter, including Goli's family, because they failed to keep up with the times, thinking their wealth would continue to perpetuate itself. Perhaps this Baskaran is canny, a man, such as Vairum, able to recognize that Brahmins' old wealth must be transformed into new money, given new life through new methods of management. Her observations suggest, though, that Vairum is exceptional. She would feel so much better if Baskaran earned a wage.

It's both too early and perhaps too late for her to object. Perhaps Baskaran's family will not be taken in; perhaps they will demand a horoscope and it will be unsuitable; perhaps some other obstacle will arise.

But if Vairum has decided on this match, she says later to Muchami, as they go over grocery lists, it's probably too late for her to do anything about it. Muchami tells her she's right.

"If Vairum decides on it, though," she says, "he will do everything to make sure it does turn out for the best. His pride will never let a match he makes go wrong." She shrugs and sighs. "At least I have that insurance."

On the morning of the birthday party, Janaki, Kamalam, Radhai, Krishnan and Raghavan walk down the Brahmin quarter to Minister's house. Radhai is under specific instructions, which Janaki and Kamalam are charged with enforcing, to behave in a ladylike manner. Radhai, ten, is never deliberately disobedient, but the force of her personality is such that she is easily distracted. At the height of Kamalam's coming-of-age ceremony three weeks earlier, for instance, Radhai burst into the courtyard covered in mud, a frog in each hand, clamouring for a pot to put them in. Raghavan, at three, wors.h.i.+ps her.

The girls are welcomed by Gayatri's youngest daughter, Akila. While Raghavan and Krishnan run to the back to play with the other little boys, Akila invites Radhai to help her greet guests, offering them rock sugar, sprinkling them with rosewater. Akila is a placid girl, and Kamalam and Janaki encourage Radhai to spend time with her, while they seat themselves against a wall and examine, with disguised curiosity, the family Vairum has targeted. They whisper to one another: the family looks familiar, they must have seen them sometime; they may even have seen the groom-oh! They used the word! Now it can't be taken back! Janaki hits her sister unconvincingly and frowns, holding her braid in front of her mouth and trying to keep out of the sightlines of her potential in-laws.

Only the matron and her daughters have come. The daughters' saris are of a rich silk, with heavily embroidered pallus that slimmer bodies would not support. Fortunately the sisters are unvaryingly large, one plump and squishy, another bustling and broad, another solidly stout as though a slap to her thighs would ring like a bra.s.s pot. They all carry additional weight in the form of large gold ornaments and hairpieces. Their mother trumps them, though. She might be the largest person Janaki has ever seen, sitting in soft mounds that roll and break with each of her movements, though she moves rarely and slowly. Her eyes are small and sharp between rising cheeks and drooping forehead.

Watching them, Janaki feels skinny and unadorned. She is barely ninety pounds, wrapped in a conservative sari of serviceable silk, wearing a complete but understated set of earrings, nose rings, chains and bangles. Her thick braid, which she fingers as she watches them, is probably the weightiest of her ornaments, its end hitting just above her knees.

That afternoon, Janaki goes back to Gayatri's house, this time with only Kamalam as an escort. It is the hour when she normally practises veena. Vairum, on his trips through Cholapatti for overseeing purposes, will often sit in the hall and listen. Her playing has none of Vani's unsettling genius, Janaki is far too sane and conventional for that, but it is very good. She has a light, fresh touch, the quality of mornings in the cool seasons after the rains, pleasing and restorative.

Gayatri presents Janaki to Baskaran's mother, whom everyone calls Senior Mami. She lies on her side on a bamboo mat. Akila's veena, the one on which Janaki and Sita learned to play all those years before, has been set up. Baskaran's sisters, also gathered around, compliment Janaki's slenderness and her hair, while the great woman's eyes glint blades of taste and discernment.

Janaki sits at the veena and tunes it. She has thought for days about what she will play, and decided to start with "Sami Varnam," a reliable favourite. She is aware, as she plays the varnam, that she is using it to demonstrate her level of command: she is not a concert artist, but she has some deserved confidence. As she concludes it and prepares to play "Sakala Kala Vani," she senses that she has won her audience's interest.

She has been practising "Sakala Kala Vani" hard for some months and begins with an aalapanai, not so ambitious or lengthy a one as a concert performer, but one that she knows demonstrates a degree of erudition. She plays, even to her own ear, very well. She has never really played for an audience and is surprised at how it heightens the emotional charge of the music-perhaps because she feels she has a message she must communicate-and makes her less conscious of those technical points she knows she has mastered yet still obsesses on. As she concludes the finale, an improvisational charanam, she begins sweating and blus.h.i.+ng, the moisture on her fingers threatening her playing. She manages to finish, wipes her hands and doesn't look up.

The sisters burst into chatter, full of compliments and questions. Janaki plays divinely! Did Vani teach her? Who is teaching her now? She is too inspired-a real talent! Janaki ducks her head and bites her lip while Kamalam proudly answers the inquiries on her behalf.

Senior Mami says nothing, but looks approving. Gayatri urges Janaki to play one more piece. Janaki is uncertain, but the sisters press her until she gives in and plays "Jaggadhodharana," explaining it is a tribute to Vani, the first person she heard play it. When Janaki departs, she thinks she sees Senior Mami, faintly, smile.

"The sisters all seem nice. Unpretentious," Kamalam comments cautiously, as they return home.

"They do, don't they?" Janaki feels as though she is waiting for exam results, except that she's not really sure whether she wants to pa.s.s or fail. She has sensed that Sivakami might not feel as enthusiastic as Vairum about this potential alliance, though she can't guess why.

She pa.s.sed: a letter arrives, written and signed by Baskaran's father, saying he has a son of marriageable age and understands Sivakami has a granddaughter, a beautiful girl of good reputation, and could they arrange a girl-seeing?

Vairum makes the arrangements and is in Cholapatti to greet Baskaran, who comes with his father, Dhoraisamy, one of the elder sons, a sister, whom Janaki has met before, and two nephews. Vairum ushers the party into the main hall with a tinge of the false heartiness Janaki so strongly a.s.sociates with her father. Seeing him like this perplexes her. Baskaran, who is fair and chubby, balding a little and wearing round black-framed spectacles, seems quiet and well-behaved. He smiles deferentially at Vairum and, palms together, does a deep obeisance to Sivakami, who lurks at the entrance to the pantry.

In the kitchen, Janaki adjusts her sari, which is lush and appropriate, a maroon silk bordered in teal. She takes the refreshment tray from Sivakami. Her hands and feet have been hennaed for the occasion-the leaves, which Kamalam gathered and crushed, had been so fresh and potent that Janaki's palms and fingertips are nearly black. As she serves, she tries not to look at Baskaran.

Dhoraisamy, in contrast with his son, is animated and talkative, wiry and long-fingered. His daughters clearly inherited their bubbliness from him, if not their physiques.

"Such a good house-certainly it would be our great fortune to have an alliance," he a.s.sures Vairum, abasing himself. "Gayatri has a.s.sured us of how well brought up the children are, as though we didn't already know. We know! We know!"

Fathers-in-law are supposed to be aloof and difficult to interest, Janaki thinks, trying not to giggle. thinks, trying not to giggle. Doesn't he know he's reducing his bargaining power? Doesn't he know he's reducing his bargaining power?

She returns to the kitchen and sees Radhai, arms out, walking the perimeter of the courtyard well. Janaki bids her angrily, sotto voce, get down, then returns to the hall entrance and, with Kamalam, peeks around the corner at the visitors. Just then Baskaran looks in their direction and Kamalam yanks Janaki out of sight. Janaki is not able to tell how he's feeling-curious? amused? He has a pleasant look about him, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's having a good time.

And now, as is customary at these things, and since they have reverted to custom as though the early part of this process had not been quite unconventional, Janaki comes to play and sing for them. She goes to the veena, head down, knees rubbing as she walks. Her potential father-in-law is leaning toward her, nodding and smiling. Janaki keeps her eyes fixed on the floor, biting her lip as though she were shy, instead of trying to hold in her giggles at her prospective father-in-law's manner.

Dhoraisamy is simpering to Vairum, "Tch-we hardly need to hear her play for ourselves. I mean, of course it is an enormous pleasure, but her reputation precedes her. My wife couldn't stop talking about her."

Vairum raises his eyebrows above a long, slow smile. He says to the man, while looking at Janaki, "Is that so? Well, let's hope the real thing is not a disappointment."

"Ah! No, no!" Dhoraisamy tosses his head back with a hearty laugh. "How could that be? Oh, to have a musician in the family! You are too, too fortunate!"

Janaki seats herself gingerly at her instrument, barely able to move her head for trying not to laugh, and commences "Sami Varnam." She is a little distracted at first, trying to imagine this man's wife, who did not say one word in her presence, going on and on to her husband. Probably she said something like, "She plays veena," and sent the entire house into an uproar over her unusual loquaciousness.

She sinks into her playing and feels the party float slightly away from her. Dhoraisamy exaggeratedly beats time, flipping his palm up and down and touching each finger to his thumb with extravagant waves of his wrist, crying, "Vah, vah!" and "Sabas.h.!.+" as though this is a Mughal court. Janaki tries not to let it distract her. She can just imagine what her grandmother thinks of him, though it is nice to be so spectacularly appreciated.

Sivakami watches from her spot, remembering herself at ten, singing for Hanumarathnam, her eyes screwed shut as though to demonstrate how little she cared what he thought. She actually thought she didn't care. Janaki is evidently concerned with playing well, but to what end? Is she destined to find contentment with this family? Could this Dhoraisamy be sincere, with all his exclaiming and arm-waving? He will be lucky to get one of my granddaughters, He will be lucky to get one of my granddaughters, she thinks, in a rare moment of arrogance. she thinks, in a rare moment of arrogance. They are exceptionally well They are exceptionally well brought up girls. She happens at that moment to glance back out at the courtyard, but doesn't see Radhai, just out of sight, now balancing on a bra.s.s pot, one foot on either side of the lip. brought up girls. She happens at that moment to glance back out at the courtyard, but doesn't see Radhai, just out of sight, now balancing on a bra.s.s pot, one foot on either side of the lip.

When Janaki finishes playing, there is a strong feeling in the room that those present are merely performing the final scenes of a drama whose conclusion has been thoroughly foreshadowed. There will be no final twists in this plot. The guests part with friendly, matter-of-fact a.s.surances that they will contact one another shortly. As they go out the door, Baskaran looks back at Janaki. She covers her grin with her braid. And he smiles at her, sweetly.

Vairum folds his arms and leans victoriously against the closed door. He points at Janaki and says, "I always knew you were the smart one. You did it. You deserve to marry this family, Janaki. You got them, just like I knew you would, given a chance. Ha-haaa!" He claps his hands just once and holds them together as though shaking his own hand. "Oh, my girl, you are going to have a good life. Just the life your mother would have wanted for you."

Janaki smiles warily at him. Kamalam turns and goes upstairs. Janaki leaves her uncle and grandmother to talk to each other. This is none of her business. She goes and changes out of her sari, smoothes its folds a last time and uses a stick in the corner to hang it tidily on the sari rod above her head. She goes to find Kamalam on the roof.

Kamalam is looking off the roof at the street and doesn't look when Janaki joins her. Her voice sounds funny when she asks, "So when do you think it's going to happen?"

"What, the wedding?" Janaki frowns.

"What else?"

"I don't know," Janaki shrugs.

"You're so lucky," Kamalam murmurs. "You're so lucky."

"Why? Because they're rich?"

"Everything, Janaki Akka."

Janaki doesn't say anything. She feels apprehensive, despite liking Baskaran. Being rich doesn't seem like a guarantee of anything. Minister's mother went mad; the people three doors down had to sell their grand house and move into a flat in Thiruchi where they share a bathroom with three other families; she even thinks her paternal grandparents once were rich. Where is her father in all this? Shouldn't he be making these arrangements?

Downstairs, Sivakami has screwed up her courage to the point of recklessness.

"This boy." She clears her throat. "He is not even a graduate. Rich boys have less motivation to work than boys from the middle cla.s.s."

"His elder brothers are working." Vairum looks up from where he lies on a bamboo mat. This is exceptional-he never rests-so the morning's triumph must have worn him out, or maybe he is scheming further.

"We don't know under what circ.u.mstances." Sivakami gathers momentum. "So many families are losing their lands these days. Not everyone has done as well as we have. We have done well because of your efforts and your uncles'. What if they lose their wealth, like so many have?"