"Has your son made contact with the Justice Party?" Minister asks Ranga, not changing the subject but deflecting it from his guest.

"Oh, quite," Ranga replies, in a gay, vague tone: he clearly has no idea.

"It's a natural fit-I'm sure other Chettiar organizations are getting behind them," Minister presses charmingly.

The South Indian Liberal Federation, increasingly called the "Justice" Party after its English-language daily, was founded by well-educated and generally well-off non-Brahmins. It is dedicated to opposing the independence movement, whose ranks are dominated by Brahmins: while Justice Party-ites murmur that of course all Indians want independence, they are devoted to preventing its realization at present because of the fear that, under current conditions, an independently governed India means a Brahmin-governed India. They will gain an ear among Brits who, regarding the Jew Montagu with no little disapproval, understand antipathy to moneyed minorities with aspirations to govern.

Minister, ever the cross-caste campaigner, is promoting the party among his non-Brahmin a.s.sociates. He's certain Justice will make a successful run. Even though, as a Brahmin, he can't join the party, he wants to ensure he has many fingers in their pie.

"It's a self-destructive concept, a non-Brahmin organization!" expostulates Dr. Kittu. "Moneyed non-Brahmins have no more in common with one another than they do with Brahmins. Except in this one enterprise, you fellows are always competing, always trying to set yourselves apart from one another." He turns on Minister, his fellow Brahmin, with gentler reproach. "You shouldn't be encouraging them."

Minister performs a likable shrug and offers the doctor a plate of a.s.sorted sweets. Later this year, he will stand for his first election: he hopes to make the leap from Taluk to District Board. In part, Vairum knows, these men gather here daily because they believe he will succeed-he is the best-connected man in the district and increasingly relied upon for those connections. These men connect to one another through him. Maybe someday, Vairum thinks, he, too, will be such a hub. Not for politics, though. He knows that already.

Rama Sastri, whose attention is rarely held by the conversation but seems, to Vairum, not to have anything else to do, has spotted the letters page and is frowning at the circled item.

"Special interest here, wot?" He flourishes it inquiringly, and Dr. Kittu irritably s.n.a.t.c.hes it.

Mani Iyer, reading over the doctor's shoulder, starts, hurt in his voice. "Daily there are these criticisms of Mrs. Besant-"

"Drivel!" says the doctor. "Muckrakers!"

"Oh, now, gentlemen," Minister sighs sympathetically. "Why would we trust self-hating Britons to give us guidance? But that's not why I circled that item. What do you think of the prose?"

Rama Sastri re-examines and reads the letter aloud with special emphases to show he has solved the puzzle. "Do we have a stylist in our midst?" He pops his monocle and moues at Minister, who giggles in response.

"What's so special about it?" Muthu Reddiar asks thickly as the others attempt to look knowledgeably disengaged, and Vairum is rea.s.sured to see that there are others here who are trying to hide their confusion, as well as at least one person who doesn't mind showing it.

Far from Home 1919.

HER BROTHERS HAD BEEN RIGHT: Vairum is leaving her. Sivakami had known this, and still, boldly, baldly, made her choice.

The seventeen-year-old Vairum, though, looks indisputably happy and proud. His valise is packed, his shoes shined; Rukmini, Gayatri, Minister and their children, and Vairum's math teacher are gathered for the send-off. Murthy will escort Vairum and get him settled in the dormitory. Sivakami has nearly finished a.s.sembling a tiffin for them to eat on the train.

Muchami comes to the kitchen entrance to say the bullock cart is ready. With little to take, Vairum could easily have walked to the station, but what sort of fare-thee-well would that have been for a young man off to attend St. Joseph's College in Thiruchi?

Always, Sivakami glances at Muchami's face to gauge her own emotions, but today his expression is not her own. No one feels about her son as she does. Muchami has concern for the child, and pity, and the restrained affection that develops with proximity, but does not have Sivakami's pa.s.sionate protectiveness. His pity is reflexive: Vairum is a child without friends. He is thought so sharp and so bright as to be una.s.sailable. Even Gayatri, despite an interest in Vairum's welfare, feels no fear on his behalf. Thangam is not here to show affection toward her little brother, and so Sivakami alone worries for the diamond-hard boy. She knows he will succeed, at college and afterward. He will become all he was meant to be. So what is she worried about? She has the feeling that if she could see far enough into his dark eyes, she would know, but Vairum doesn't let her look.

Sivakami speaks in tones alternately too brusque and too indulgent : Has Vairum packed twenty neem sticks for his teeth in case he couldn't find a good tree right away? And what about the shoe polish Minister brought him from Thiruchi?

"I can buy shoe polish there!" Vairum says.

"Obviously: that's where he bought it," she says, peevish now. "But we have no use for it here!"

Vairum has no patience for his mother's sentimentality. He wants to rush out, rush forward. He hears the bullock snort and stamp outside.

Sivakami is not finished. "Every mother who permits her son to leave her asks him for a promise. I am the same as every mother."

Vairum looks away from her, toward the door.

"Look at me," Sivakami says. He looks at her feet. "Your father's first wife was lost in the river which connects our small village to Thiruchi. I worship our Kaveri Mata daily, the river that gives us life. I ask her to spare the precious lives of our children. Promise me." Sivakami strains toward him. "Promise you will not swim in that river. You drink her water, your clothes are washed in her flow. That's enough. Boys will try to tempt you..."

Fat chance, thinks Vairum. Muchami reads it on his face.

"It will look like fun, but I cannot afford this. It is sacrifice enough to send you so far."

Vairum looks troubled. "The cost, Amma?" He thought he knew all their financial ins and outs. They can afford this.

"The cost of losing you, to the city, to the river, to ..." She can't go on.

Minister clears his throat, steps in. "Promise your mother, and then look lively. Only twenty-five minutes till the train." He nods at Muchami, who picks up the valise.

Vairum mumbles something.

"Huh?" The volume of Sivakami's voice startles both her son and herself.

"I promise, good?" he repeats. "Can I go?"

Sivakami is seeing two scenes at once. She watches her son mount the cart-shiny dark shoes and shiny dark head and large, slim hands dangling from thin adolescent arms, his father's hands, but for a large white patch emerging from one sleeve and encompa.s.sing two knuckles-as she also sees a moment from their past: their family, wading into the Kaveri. She recalls the feeling of her hair ravelling its binds and floating up in the breeze cooling itself along the water. Baby Vairum, arms clasped around her knees as Muchami calls to him from farther out in the current. Hanumarathnam, helping little Thangam out of her paavaadai on the bank.

Watching Muchami help Murthy into the cart, she feels as though she is looking at and through the river's surface, seeing her own world reflected and also seeing the otherworld of fishes and insects. The otherworld of her memory feels at least as real: Muchami is several steps out in the river, the water only as deep as his shins. Vairum lets go of Sivakami one hand at a time with Muchami's wiry grasp around his chubby baby elbows. Delighted, he floats in the water, little-boy face to the sun, with Muchami squatting, holding him up. Hanumarathnam squats to do the same for Thangam, but she doesn't float. He tries to lift her from the armpits, but she's too heavy. Hanumarathnam falls, a big splash, and gets up laughing. Thangam splashes, too, slaps the water in excitement, then covers her mouth with her hands. Sivakami claps in excitement, and Vairum claps, too, laughing in the sun. Oh, those eyes.

Before her now, in the Brahmin quarter, the bullock's back gleams, then dulls with dust up the fatty hump. The tail flicks once as the cart rocks around the corner and away. Vairum doesn't look back. No weeping crowd, no running children. There are no rituals for bidding farewell to a son.

THIRUCHINAPALLI.

Vairum has read up a little on the history of the city, poring through the Trichinopoly District Gazetteer Gazetteer at Minister's house. He likes the British spelling-as though Thiruchi were a transplanted Greek city. In any case, this has been universally shortened to "Trichy" or "Thiruchi"-certain names are a mouthful for Tamils and non-Tamils uniformly. Families of the region, though, call the city Kottai-fort-for the city's most prominent feature, a small mountain fortified by the ill.u.s.trious Nayaks in their reign, now the site of the city's favoured temple. at Minister's house. He likes the British spelling-as though Thiruchi were a transplanted Greek city. In any case, this has been universally shortened to "Trichy" or "Thiruchi"-certain names are a mouthful for Tamils and non-Tamils uniformly. Families of the region, though, call the city Kottai-fort-for the city's most prominent feature, a small mountain fortified by the ill.u.s.trious Nayaks in their reign, now the site of the city's favoured temple.

Kottai is the last stop before Thiruchi Junction, and Vairum remembers, when he was eleven and just learning to keep track of such things, panicking when he saw that Minister, who had brought him to Thiruchi on their annual shoe-buying trip, wasn't moving. He only knew Thiruchi by this name and naturally thought they were missing their stop. Minister laughed and patted his knee. "Kottai is Kottai, m'boy, and Trichy is Trichy. See?" he said, pointing at the sign as they pulled into the main station.

Vairum shakes his head at the memory as they pull into the big station now. He was so green! Murthy is still drowsing, his head lolling to all points of the compa.s.s, and Vairum shakes him. He waits for the two immense, slumbering barristers opposite them to wake and arrange themselves so he can extract his valise from behind their legs-brothers, they had explained in the early part of the journey, when everyone was alert and conversational. The young barristers, who were in Kulithalai doing an official and personal favour for an old friend, are also St. Joseph's alumni and heartily pleased to meet the young admittee. They are so obese that each occupies nearly half the wooden bench, their legs dangling forward over the below-bench storage area like mahogany pillars in some hall of justice.

As the train halts, Murthy wakes, smacking his lips, and rearranges his oily kudumi kudumi-the hairstyle, front of the head shaved, the rest in a ponytail, has not yet been thrust from fashion by British influence-so that it is equally but differently dishevelled. "We're here."

It seems to Vairum that the equivalent of the entire population of Kulithalai streams past on the platform. The thrill of arrival in the city never seems to diminish. And now he is to live here!

The barristers awaken with snorts, compose their linen jackets, put on their Parsi-style caps. Murthy follows them to the door with Vairum's suitcase and they exchange addresses on the platform. The lawyers will change trains here to return home, and Murthy and Vairum are cordially invited to visit if ever they find themselves in Pandiyoor, a market town in the Madurai district.

Murthy leads Vairum along the platform, past the first- and second-cla.s.s resting rooms, past the steamy tiffin stand, past the small station offices panelled in dark wood and full of uniformed men with moustaches, toward the exit, beyond which the city quivers, mirage-like and muscular.

Late that afternoon, back in Cholapatti, Sivakami has cooked a lot of food and is wondering who will eat it. She has little appet.i.te.

She wanders into the garden. The birds are getting active in antic.i.p.ation of the evening cool, and the yard seems very loud. Was it this loud when Vairum was still here? She checks on the progress of the papaya, notes the coconut palms look a bit dry. From the northeast, she can hear hoots of young male laughter-the Brahmin quarter's youth gathering to go to Kulithalai for an evening of loitering in the market square. Muchami tells her that the ones with money play cards at the club. She imagines her Samanthibakkam nephews doing exactly the same. Nice boys, but not brilliant. What if she had stayed, and seen those boys going to secular schools, and her own son in a mediocre local paadasaalai? He would have grown bitter, sharper than any of them, but with no potential to earn. His cousins were friendly when they were small, but during ten years of living on her brothers' goodwill, their relations would have changed. It wouldn't have been charity ; she would have paid all of her own costs and Vairum's, but no one would have been permitted to know or acknowledge this; that would be bad form. Vairum would not have been the king of that household, the way he is here, in his own home. She imagines her nephews calling Vairum's name and laughing.

But she is not imagining it. The boys on the other side of her garden wall, they are talking about her son. She moves closer, though there is no need, their voices are clear as well water.

"He came of age and was taken away!" one snorts, impressed at his own wit.

"Yeah, he came of age and rode away on a bullock cart!" says another, as though it was he who thought of it.

"Like a bride!" says another, as though no one had understood the joke before.

Sivakami knows, through her sources, that none of these boys made any mark, academically. There was only one other Cholapatti boy, apart from Vairum, who had done well. He had gone to Thanjavur, where one of his four sisters was married into a family of revenue officials. His parents had eight other sons, two of whom might even be in the crowd ma.s.sed at her garden wall. Their brother was not being insulted.

Sivakami crouches by her wall, her face hot.

Then a neighbouring door opens: not Murthy's, to her left, but the other, to her right, Dharnakarna, the witch.

From beyond her eastern wall, Sivakami hears the young witch's slightly m.u.f.fled voice: "Move away from my door with your dirty talk!"

The boys escape toward town, yelping with shared fear and collective bravado like skinny yellow pi-dogs.

Safe.Dear Amma,Murthy Periappa will have told you all about our trip, so I don't need to. I don't need to.The names of the three other boys in my hostel room are K. Govindasamy, an Iyer boy, C.S. Francis Lourdesamy, a Christian, obviously, and S.K. Natarajan, a Reddiar.They are all in the sciences stream, like me, thoughLourdesamy really wants to be a priest.As Minister Mama coached me, I explained about my skin condition before my roommates could ask, and they have helped to defend me against those who don't understand. We in our cell are enlightened people, not given to old folkways.I know you want to know about every single meal I eat, but I'm not going to write about that. I won't lose any weight, that's enough.The masters really want to give us a challenge. This is a big change from Kulithalai school where the teachers were always afraid I would already know more than they did. I didn't. (Not always) But here, I can have as much extra homework as I want. Most of the other boys don't want extra, obviously. I am taking extra maths, physics and chemistry-won't bore you with the details.Your son, Vairum Vairum Sivakami folds the letter exactly as Vairum must have, far away in Kottai, in a room she will never see. She knows he knows she is upset by the idea of his rooming with a Reddiar and can barely stomach the thought of his sleeping in the same room with a Christian, probably from a family of converted untouchables, she thinks, ma.s.ses of whom were convinced by missionaries that Christians don't have any truck with caste. He's almost certainly descended from a lower caste, at the least. She's amazed the other Brahmin boy's parents permit it, but maybe they have as little control as she feels she does. When Vairum was admitted to a Christian college, she worried this would be the result, but Murthy persuaded her. St. Joseph's is an excellent college, even if it's not a Hindu one.

She slips the letter back into its envelope, imagining his hands doing that, writing his sums, eating his food. She tries to imagine the food, picturing great steaming vats of rice attended by Brahmin cooks. Chinnarathnam had made discreet inquiries on her behalf and reported that there were both vegetarian and non-vegetarian dining halls and that the cooks in the vegetarian hall were Brahmin, one of a few concessions by the British administration to the Brahmin parents, whose sons make up a significant segment of the student population.

She places the letter before the Ramar. Later, she will haltingly read it aloud for Muchami and Mari since they, too, relish news of Vairum's great adventure.

VAIRUM FOLDS THE FINE PAPER in half and in half again and slips it into a pinkish-brown envelope. He scoops a crusty gob of official-smelling mashed-rice paste from the small pot on the corner of the worktable he shares with Francis Lourdesamy and smears it across the underside of the envelope flap. He addresses the sealed envelope to Minister and Gayatri: another brief but chatty note, another promise kept. He makes a point of thanking Minister for his advice and asking after their children. He does like the idea that he has people to write to, even if there is little he really wants to tell them.

He's alone in his room and, as he folds his jingling pouch of silver into the waist of his dhoti, he wonders where the others are. His money pouch doesn't include the silver piece he was permitted to keep from the gathering of coins that marked his return to Cholapatti. That coin is folded into his waistband, as always, separate from his spending money. It is, after all these years, as much a part of his daily toilet as hair oil and a fresh shirt. No one knows it's there, and he doesn't feel dressed without it.

He leaves the hostel and pa.s.ses the temple tank, nervously putting his palms together to greet two of the maths masters, who overtake him, absorbed in serious conversation. They nod back, busy, friendly. Their recognition inflates him.

Exiting the campus gate, he takes the long way around the traffic roundabout, idly browsing the knick-knacks for sale. A woman squats against the wall of the main St. Joseph's campus, behind an array of Ganesha statuettes. The largest is about eight inches tall, the smallest about two. They are beautiful: crude, geometric, of a wood so light as to seem made of foam. Vairum picks the little fellows up admiringly, one by one. Vermilion dots the pointed crown, the n.o.ble forehead, the trunk, hands, belly, feet-thirteen auspicious red smudges. Three grooves mark the bridge between the beady black eyes, three grooves cross the belly to imply a modest garment.

Vairum bends over the elephant-headed G.o.ds, unmindful of traffic and dust in the road, ignoring the woman grinning in fear at his white patches while unceasingly extolling her wares' spiritual and artistic value.

He must have one-a companion to witness the commencement of this new enterprise, to help put the shoulder to unseen obstacles that may yet block his twisted road. He extracts from his pouch the price of a smart-looking fellow about three and a half inches tall.

His new purchase in one hand, his letter in the other, he waits now to cross to the post office when Govindasamy, one of his roommates, pulls up in front of him on a bicycle, and the others on another bike just behind him.

"Where were you, man?" calls Nattu, louder than necessary, as he falls off the handlebars. "We were looking for you."

"Um, meeting with my physics tutor." He grins back at them shyly.

Govindasamy points to his own handlebars. "Get on. We're going swimming."

"Ah, I-" Vairum looks at the letter in his hand, savouring their insistence.

"Get on," Nattu yells again, already remounted. Francis wheels unsteadily through the traffic to turn left, narrowly missing a gourd vendor and his cart. They're going to the river, the Kaveri, whose vicious seductions his mother had explicitly instructed him to resist, the only condition of his departure. This very afternoon, arriving at the physics building, his eye had caught, not for the first time, on a high-water mark memorializing one time the river had flooded the campus, running across fields to embrace the city in a morbid hug. Then there are times when one or another of the river's dams are, without warning, released...

Govindasamy jabs his hand aggressively in the direction of his handlebars once more. "Get on!"

Oh, the sweetness of one's company desired!

Vairum hops up on the handlebars, smiling widely as Govindasamy pushes off through the traffic.

The sun jigs on the docile water like Krishna on the defeated serpent's hoods. Children splash and shriek, their mothers wash clothes. The city bakes. It's the driest time of year. Vairum licks his lips; they taste of dust, of a cracked, parched road. Does the river look so wet and cool in Cholapatti? So meek? His feet rub sweatily in his shoes as he approaches the ghat with his friends.

This part of the river is three miles from the college. Vairum, looking up, sees the top edge of the Rock Fort, Malai Kottai. Here, the river looks more hospitable than agricultural, tame as an emba.s.sy party. Govindasamy, Francis and Nattu shed their clothes and descend the stairs at a point where the river is deep and narrow, dive in and swim to the opposite bank. Vairum hangs back a moment, his mouth open a little, gaping or panting, then shucks his shoes and clothes.

Ganesha sits on the bank, atop the letter addressed to Gayatri and Minister, facing the river as Vairum takes his first tentative steps down the stairs of the little ghat. The water is cool and Vairum first squats and splashes water on his dusty skin, then topples joyfully into the wet.

A cooling wind skims the water. The wooden Ganesha, light as river spume, topples onto its back and gazes at the sky. The letter lifts into the air, drops into the water and floats downstream. Cholapatti is the other way.

Two Blooms 1920.

JUST PRIOR TO THE DEEPAVALI HOLIDAYS, in his second year of college, Vairum is required to attend a wedding. He is the family delegate to such occasions, since his mother is a widow and not invited and his sister, though invited, would be dependent on her husband to bring her. If the wedding is too far away, he can generally make an excuse, but at least three or four times a year it happens that the connection or location is too close for him to avoid it.

In this case, one of those Samanthibakkam cousins closest to him in age is marrying a girl from Thiruchi, so Vairum has no means whatever of wriggling free. He spends such occasions in a contemptuous funk, a quartz isle in what he perceives as a sea of mental poverty and ambitionlessness, and must employ elaborate means to keep himself from slumping into a puttylike pile of boredom. When he was small, he used to say multiplication tables under his breath for the entire time, three or five or, once, seven days running. The longer his attendance at the wedding the larger the final figure. These days, he occupies himself with the formulas of borders and business that will make him a big man.

His entire gang of Samanthibakkam cousins is in attendance, and Vairum vaguely recollects a great enthusiasm and warmth he had for them when he was very young, but age and time have intruded, and a shyness grown. They speak, but they don't really know what to speak about. He avoids his aunts and uncles, who, on greeting him, all made cracks about the fact that the cousin marrying is his coeval, and isn't it time Vairum got hitched as well? Sivakami has been asking him about this for the last six months, and he has firmly curtailed her: he is focusing on his studies; he isn't ready.

He has not talked to her about the extreme anxiety of the prospect of a girl-seeing, given the reaction of most people to his skin condition. He would prefer to put off even thinking about it.

He stands at the back of the hall, fingering the coin at his waist under his new woollen vest. The weather has just recently grown temperate enough for him to show it off. All at once, a hushed reverence falls upon the gathering, from front to back. From the front, a veena's lambent notes flow forward to occupy the quiet. A young girl plays, looking as if she had been born between the two gourd-resonators, her left hand maintaining the drone with rhythmic strokes while her right hand plucks the melody from the strings.

This is a new trend and the a.s.sembly is stunned. Only two kinds of music have ever been heard at weddings. The first is the nadaswaram, a six-foot horn with an obscene, nasal sound, with the thavil, thavil, a double-sided drum whose hard surfaces are staccatoed by fingertips encased in strips of cloth hardened with rice paste. Musicians are low caste-Brahmins expect them to be heard but not seen. Detached, uninterested, they play a particular song for each phase of the ceremony, and in crucial moments make a huge tootling din so as to drown out any sneeze. Sneezes are very bad omens at weddings. a double-sided drum whose hard surfaces are staccatoed by fingertips encased in strips of cloth hardened with rice paste. Musicians are low caste-Brahmins expect them to be heard but not seen. Detached, uninterested, they play a particular song for each phase of the ceremony, and in crucial moments make a huge tootling din so as to drown out any sneeze. Sneezes are very bad omens at weddings.

The other music appropriate to weddings is religious songs, wheezed at prescribed moments by revered matrons. They know all the words, though their thin voices often disagree on tune and timing.

But now here is Vani, a young Brahmin girl, playing "Vallabha Nayakasya," the veena's tones breathed deep with devotion and training. Worthy of Madras concert halls (some think but do not say "brothels"), this Vani sits before them in the midst of a provincial wedding. Vairum hears the scandalized whispers start with the mridangam's mridangam's downbeat, as Vani finishes a brief but confident downbeat, as Vani finishes a brief but confident aalapanai aalapanai like a first few raindrops against gla.s.s. like a first few raindrops against gla.s.s.

"What is this spectacle-a girl playing a concert at a wedding?"

"I have heard about such things. My son's wife's people are from Madras city. They have been doing such... concerts, at weddings, since two years now."

"Who is this girl?"

"Bride's mother's uncle's daughter's daughter."

"Oh, yes, yes, the bride's family does try to be far too fashionable. I knew it would not be the groom's side arranging such things..."

"Pandiyoor girl?"

"Yes, pretty, isn't she? Different, somehow."

"Very fair, isn't she?"

"That skin-almost, I don't know, something different..."

Luminous. Vani's light draws Vairum as a moth to a cool, white flame.

He goes home to Cholapatti for the Deepavali holidays. Sivakami brings him more snacks, in greater variety, than he would ever want to eat, and begins asking him a thousand questions about the wedding. It's bad enough, he thinks, that he has to go and represent the family because his mother is a widow and disallowed. Should he also waste his brain-s.p.a.ce remembering sari styles and hush-hushed gossip?