"She's my best friend," she confides, not that he would know what a privilege this is.

He doesn't respond, and she feels a bit disgruntled: he might appreciate it just because she so clearly does. In silence, she helps him carry the milk in.

Ten days after Thangam's delivery, Janaki and Sita are kept home from school to clean house and prepare for the baby's eleventh-day naming ceremony. They spend the day bickering and being separated. Janaki manages to arrange her tasks so that she can listen to Vani's morning session : she spends the time spinning wicks from cotton bolls and knotting jasmine blossoms, marigolds and roses into garlands with cotton twine.

Kamalam fills her day by doing whatever Janaki does, but less so: she spins more slowly, her wicks are thick and uneven, her garland knots loose. Today, she can do almost nothing, owing to tension: their father is expected. Kamalam has confessed to Janaki that she is afraid of Goli and wishes he weren't coming. Janaki, who hasn't seen him for a couple of years, recalls some feeling of fear, though she is also curious.

Sivakami is preoccupied and apprehensive, as much in antic.i.p.ation of Goli's arrival as of his potential failure to arrive. Vairum will be unpleasant in either circ.u.mstance. Sita, who idolizes their father loudly and frequently (though never in Vairum's presence), is menacingly sweet today.

When Vani's morning session ends, Janaki winds up her garland weaving and reports for her next task-making murrukku, fried lentil-flour snacks. It's a ch.o.r.e the children compete for, and she has won the first shift. She takes up the tumbler portion of the murrukku-squeezing mechanism, selects a metal disk punched with star-shaped holes and drops it into the tumbler's bottom to form a sieve. She scoops batter from the basin where Sivakami has prepared it, and fills the tumbler, then takes the compressor, double-handled like the tumbler, and fits its end into the tumbler's top. Kamalam, too young for anything involving hot oil, squats in the doorway to watch.

Janaki holds the contraption over the bubbling oil and starts to squeeze, twirling it slightly to make the descending parallel lines loop as they hit the oil. The syllable "ka,"[image]appears, floating in the pot.

"Look, Kamalam, I'm writing your name!" Janaki makes a "ma,"[image]" a "la, " "[image]"and an "im,"[image]" which bubble and bob in and out of sequence, becoming "mamkala" and "lakamma" as Kamalam, who cannot read, bends open-mouthed above the wok. Janaki fishes the now solid syllables from the oil, and lays them on a plate in sequence, then pulls the tumbler from the compressor and refills it.

"Make Sita," says Kamalam, drawing closer and then back on a warning from Sivakami. Janaki does: the syllables "see" and "thaa," "[image]"sink and rise, gold against the black iron.

Muchami peeks in from the courtyard where he is washing up, and Janaki writes him into the pot. "Mu," "chaa," "mi"-but of course he cannot read Tamil.

"This is the last one, what should it be?" Janaki asks, sc.r.a.ping up the last of the batter under Sivakami's frugal eyes.

"Amma," Kamalam suggests. Sivakami smiles and turns away, though she keeps looking as Janaki spells "ah," "im," "maa,"Janaki and Kamalam wash up and, with Vani, are served their late-morning meal. Kamalam appears fascinated with Vani's stories, though Janaki is not convinced her sister is really following them. Today's was particularly worth missing school for: the story of Vani's father's second cousin who was kidnapped by a renegade band of dacoits and made to serve them for twelve years as a laundryman and spiritual adviser. His thumbs were cut off so that he could not use their stolen muskets against them, and when he was returned home, he was never again permitted in the family's sanctum sanctorum because clearly he had not prepared his own food in that time and indeed had taken up with a concubine, who not only cooked for him but fed him from her own hand.

After the morning meal, the household naps. After tiffin, while Sita makes murrukku with unusual willingness but no attention at all to shape or symmetry, Janaki is excused to listen to Vani play.

She slips out the back, swings herself up against the mango tree, bracing her toes into near invisible notches on the trunk and standing, then sitting, on a branch about eight feet off the ground. She mastered this about a week ago, practising one Sunday morning when Bharati was not around.

Bharati arrives soon after and climbs up as well. Janaki has taken the better branch-slightly wider and higher up. Bharati takes the second choice-lower and narrower. From above and to their right, Vani commences playing "Akshayalinga Sankarabaranam," a song for Shiva.

Janaki and Bharati begin to tap out the rhythm-they have just recently deciphered it. It seems to be three and a half beats: a short and a long tap on the back of the hand, two long taps on the front.

And they are humming along. Occasionally, Bharati and Janaki find themselves humming different things, each antic.i.p.ating a different turn in the song, just as happens with Vani's stories. But, increasingly, they find that even when they hum different things, neither sounds wrong, because they are both improvising on the raga, though neither will learn its name and formal properties for some years. And they don't sound bad together. So there they are, tapping and humming, their two pairs of feet dangling from the foliage. They can't see the back door from the courtyard and so don't see it open and Sita step out, hot and cranky from completing the coveted ch.o.r.e, blinking oil-smoke tears. She hears the two to her left, though she can't see them. She says, "Oh, you two songbirds fill our neighbourhood with beauty. We're so lucky! You must promise me, Bharati, that you will sing at my wedding. And Janaki, you must sing at my funeral. Promise?"

"Sita!" Sivakami's voice comes from the courtyard. Sita wheels and whacks her elbow on the heavy wood door. "Not one more word like that!"

The songbirds stop their twittering. Sita slinks back inside like a mean pet cat in a family of dog lovers.

It is shortly after midnight by the time the preparations are complete. The moon has waxed full and burns candle-bright, so Vani does, too. Janaki listens to the last strains of Vani's practice as she washes her face and hands, and Kamalam's, in the moonlight by the well.

Vairum steps off the stairs into the main hall as Janaki and Kamalam lay down their sleeping mats. He speaks to Sivakami with a roughness that has increased with the years.

"Still hasn't appeared?" It's not a question. "What will we do if he hasn't come by morning?"

Sivakami sighs. "We go ahead, even without him. We can use a stand-in, if necessary."

"Makes sense. He uses a stand-in for every other function of fatherhood-except the original one, pardon me."

Everyone else likes to sleep in the darker areas of the hall, but Janaki places her reed mat over a cold, striped mat of moonlight. Cold, milky moonlight pours in the window and runs over her face, along the grooves between her nostrils and cheek, collects in her collarbone, between her lips, in her cupped palm and the clench of her fist, and chills her finally to sleep.

The next day, the inauspicious period of raahu kaalam doesn't end until 10:30, so everyone has plenty of time to rise and bathe and grow hungry-none will be permitted to eat cooked food until after the puja. Thangam and the baby take their first bath since the birth and Thangam applies turmeric paste to her skin. It makes an ordinary woman appear golden, but on Thangam's arms and countenance it has a dulling effect. The baby is gently ma.s.saged with sesame oil, with special attention to shaping the features of his face.

From today, he will be called Krishnan, since he is the eighth child and a boy, just like the hero-child of myth. The name certainly fits, coo his sisters: just see his l.u.s.ty yells, his kicking and writhing, his handsome face. He has all the strength and charm and mischief of the G.o.d. Clearly, he is more than equal to multi-headed sea serpents and poison-nippled wet nurses. Without doubt, he could steal b.u.t.ter and charm any village lady into forgiving him.

But just in case-and especially if all the admiration to which he will be subjected makes him vulnerable to the evil eye-baby Krishnan will receive today a black cord to be tied below his belly. On the cord, among a few other tiny trinkets, will hang a cup containing a snippet of his umbilical cord, and a bit of Laddu's, the older brother who lived, sealed in with gold. Sivakami stubbornly overrode suggestions that the cup include a pinch of Thangam's gold dust. She can't believe that others persist in seeing Thangam's dust as auspicious: to her it seems quite clear that Thangam sheds when she is at her lowest, that in some way, the dust is her essence, her promise, her vitality draining from her. It's no wonder it has healing properties-she has no doubt about that-but it is not indicative of fulfillment or joy.

The puja is to commence in about ten minutes. Priest, mother and child are a.s.sembled, along with Rukmini and Murthy, Gayatri and Minister and their children, and a.s.sorted other neighbours. Even neighbours not present for the ceremony will attend the feast-it's mostly of the feast that even those a.s.sembled are thinking. Fortunately, this ceremony is not a long one. The question, as always, is how to plug the conspicuous Goli-shaped hole. Thangam is releasing dust in volumes as though the stuff might fill the void, or, failing this, mask it. Rukmini, clumsy and helpful, gathers it into a dish. Vairum, looking disgusted, finally clears his throat with a snort and looks at Sivakami as though challenging her to make a decision. She takes a breath and turns to the priest, wondering what she will say.

She is spared. There is a commotion in the street, then the front door swings open and their hopes and fears are confirmed: Goli has finally arrived. Sita runs gleefully to greet him. "Appa, Appa, a new little brother!"

He speaks over the little girl's head. "h.e.l.lo, folks, h.e.l.lo!" His high, handsome brow and ruddy features shine as though he could make the sun sweat. "What's all this?"

Sita trails behind him, a weak smile at the ready in case he should turn and see her.

"The eleventh day," Sivakami responds. "The eleventh day after the birth ..."

"What? Oh, I thought it was the... Wait until you-look what I brought! Son, you!" He is waving in Laddu's general direction. "You come, help me."

Laddu runs out willingly and they struggle back in with a large crate leaking straw. With a creak and tear of wood, Goli removes the top of the crate and digs through the stuffing.

"Catch!" he cries.

Luscious, exotic malgoa mangoes-Goli tosses them one by one by one by one over the austere, pious little hall. Shooting stars. The children run after them. The adults, bewildered, reach and jump on the spot. And starbursts: one, then another, explodes ripely against the clean brick floor. Visalam, eight and a half months pregnant, slips and falls in a mango slick.

A gasp goes up like a lost balloon, three more stars plop from the firmament and Gayatri rushes to aid the fallen girl. Visalam's face is crumpled, as if she is about-to-sneeze-or-cry-then ... "Ha, ha, ha, ha ..." She rolls over laughing, and the others, tentatively, do too. Sivakami looks relieved, then severe. Vairum only looks severe. Thangam looks away. The priest has one eye on the hourgla.s.s, but he's as up for a good laugh as anyone.

Now Goli is reaching inside his coat again, and pulling out... what now? Pens. Shiny, new pens, far beyond the reach of every day. These, too, he tosses in the air. "Catch, children, catch!" he cries. The pens turn and glint. Gold like Thangam and straight like arrows, they circle in the late-morning sun that seeps in through c.h.i.n.ks.

Janaki is thrilled and aghast. Such opulence, such waste! There are mangoes ripening on the trees in the yard, not malgoas, which come from far away and are terribly expensive, but still, perfectly tasty, or maybe not perfectly, but good enough. And if they need pen and ink at school, they dip a nib tied to a twig into ink mixed from powder. What need could they have, mere children, for such luxuries? It has never occurred to her to want them. But as she looks at Sita, Janaki sees it has occurred to her sister. Sita has no real taste for either food or penmanship, but her look implies she could cultivate both, given food and pens that were worth her while.

Goli is lugging in yet another crate, p.r.o.nouncing like a street huckster, "And for my bride Thangam, as beautiful as the day I married her, the gift of music!"

Thangam blushes fast and deep under her turmeric mask, and all the other women blush briefly for her, too-such inappropriate comments...

But what could this be? A wooden box with a bra.s.s crank like a shrugging arm. Goli affixes something like an enormous trumpet-blossom to its side. The guests gape, the puja forgotten, as Goli pulls two large black plates out of the packing with a flourish. "Stand back, friends, a little room please."

He fits the disk onto the top of the box, turns the crank a dozen rotations, then lifts a lever from the box with a point he sets upon the record. Crackles, hisses and pops begin emerging from the great flower, but before the Brahmin-quarter denizens can start to fear the snakes or insects or whatever will follow, the hall is filled with music.

The good people of Cholapatti listen in astounded silence, motionless, until a few come forward cautiously to peer into the bloom's private depths. Surely a thumb-sized musician must sit there amidst stamens and pistils, writhing snakes and whirring beetles. They pull back from the flower's empty darkness to look, mystified, at Goli, who winks, raises his eyebrows, gestures toward the machine, offering no explanation. Thangam hangs back shyly. She doesn't try, as the others do, to find the music's source. She owns it, it is hers. Goli said it was. Here is proof, if anyone wants it: he does think of her. Sita stands proudly beside the contraption, policing the crowd.

The music is not nearly so impressive as Vani's, but few of those a.s.sembled appreciate this. Janaki is among them, aware of how dull and uninspired the playing is, but she must admit that this does not diminish the thrill. The player's absence gives her an appeal beyond Vani's reach. Oh, listen! The song ended and the tiny musician said her name. Where is she? Maddening. Several advance again to try to see her, as Murthy begins pompously explaining how the technology works.

Janaki looks at her aunt, who had finished her playing amidst the final puja preparations. Is Vani hurt at all the attention being given to a mediocre musician who is not even here? Most villagers don't appreciate her playing anyway, and since her melancholic phase began some weeks back, a few have actually complained. Her recent improvisations remind a person so strongly of old grief, it's been hard to get things done. Fights have broken out. Perhaps the appeal of the absent Madras musician's mechanical recital is increased by the villagers' recent feeling of estrangement from Vani.

Though she appears to be paying attention to the new music, Vani doesn't look in the direction of the gramophone or the crowd. As the record ends, Vani sweeps the room with a glance, her eyes narrowed, nostrils flared. Janaki, too, is caught in her net of disdain-the only person to notice it, the least deserving. Vani goes upstairs.

Everyone else is clamouring for the invisible musician's return, and Goli lifts the needle to the start of the record once more. Amidst the bustle and buzz now comes Vairum's voice, coldly inquiring whether they shouldn't think of commencing the puja, given that the hour ticks down.

All jump to. Goli must be instructed twice in each task and always looks as though he is about to break in and say something. Sometimes he does, comments neither amusing nor relevant, but everyone laughs and pays attention. When he sees his new son, he picks him up and swings him, making the baby shriek with justifiable fear.

"He loves it!" cries Goli. "Listen to those lungs!"

Then, distracted by some new thought, he hands Krishnan back to Thangam and doesn't seek his son again. Janaki, who had leapt forward in alarm when her father swung the baby in the air, sinks down beside her mother. Kamalam is already huddled there. She was a little too excited to feel afraid until that moment, and impressed by all the show, but now she is shaking a little. Was their father this careless with all of them?

Janaki leans on her mother, who doesn't respond. She feels a familiar whir of disappointment but no surprise. She had tried a couple of times, before her brother was born, to be affectionate with Thangam and found that her overtures were not reciprocated. The pain has begun to lessen, though, and she takes some comfort from the simple warmth of her side.

The puja soon ends and Sivakami begins insisting the male guests and children have lunch. No one would refuse, but they let themselves be pressed as a courtesy. Janaki sets banana leaves down in a row along each side of the main hall, and Sita follows her, holding in iddikki tongs the lip of a hot pot of semolina pudding, from which she deposits a blob on each leaf as the diners sit down. Kamalam begs to be allowed to serve also and follows her sisters with a vessel full of vadais.

One lunch guest begins polite conversation, asking, "How long have you leave, Goli?"

"Oh, my schedule is my own." Goli slurps up the initial daub of sweet. "This is a business trip for me."

"Revenue department business?" inquires another luncher. Some of these people tried for some years to extract what they are owed for undelivered deer's heads.

"Ha!" Goli sprays three or four morsels of rice with sambar back toward his leaf. "I'd not make any money at all, if that's all I did."

"What kind of a salary does the department offer?" asks an anxious-browed man from several doors away. "My son plans to take the civil service exam next year. I told him to talk to you."

"You wouldn't believe. Thirty rupees monthly."

"Oh, that's... well, it's a good salary, of course, but to feed a family of what, eight children..."

"No, no, absolutely unjust. Very difficult to make ends meet." Goli signals for more rice, and rasam, the next course, and Janaki and Sita run out with serving dishes. He conveys a sense of constant motion above his meal, and despite talking more than anyone, also eats more and faster.

Janaki, serving Vairum, whose indignation is writ large on his face, wishes her appa would just keep his mouth shut. She knows her father has never tossed more than a few odd paisa toward his kids' upbringing and she turns, blushing, away from her uncle's rage.

Another neighbour inquires with hesitant interest, "Where are you stationed currently, Goli?"

"One has somewhat just transferred to Malapura. But I am maintaining strong interests in Salem. Salem!" Goli reinforces. The man, who heard the first time, nods. "That's where everything is happening. Everything modern."

"Oh, is that so?" another politely remarks while belching.

"Oh, yes," huffs Goli. "Industries! Banking! Everything is there!"

"Ah..." several men nod.

"Yep." Goli gobbles both desserts and calls for more, and yogourt rice. "That's where my son here had better set up. Might even get him to do his college there first."

"College?" someone chokes lightly-another of Goli's unpaid creditors. Eyebrows rise in a ripple among the eaters: Goli's son Krishnan is yet a possibility but Laddu's poor school performance is no secret.

"Sure," Goli finishes, and drinks water, a long stream poured down his throat from a tumbler, which Janaki waits to refill, twice, from a bra.s.s jug. He belches monstrously. "If he's going to be an engineer, lawyer, medical doctor, he has to go to college-may as well be there!"

"Oh-ho, Athimbere," Vairum growls, making the honorific, "elder sister's husband," sound sarcastic. Goli turns slowly to face his brother-in-law. "How's your money situation? Problems?"

Sivakami is in the kitchen and doesn't hear Vairum's remark, but hears the main hall grow silent.

"Not at all, Vairum," Goli smiles tightly. "I don't know when things have gone as well. So many opportunities opening up. A person just has to know how to take advantage."

"You certainly know how to take advantage, Athimbere," Vairum spits. "That is definitely one of your strong suits."

"I'm sure we all prefer not to know what you are talking about, Vairum, but what I am talking about"-Goli opens his face like a late-season sunflower to the rest of the company-"is investment. I'm sure there are many present who wouldn't mind knowing how to improve fortunes grown paltry with time."

"Investing with you, Athimbere, would be the equivalent of burying one's wealth and forgetting the location." Vairum flicks his hand twice toward his leaf, folds it toward himself and stands. "But anyone stupid enough to give you his money deserves to lose it."

"Vairum!" Sivakami says from the kitchen. "That's bad manners."

"No, Amma." Vairum sighs fast and wearily. "It's a warning. I would hate, I would really hate to see anyone in this room lose money he can ill afford."

"How disrespectful can a man be? Listen to your mother!" Goli shrills. "You keep your head in the clouds and act superior to try to keep the people of your village beneath you. They are not fooled!"

"So they'll do what they choose." Vairum disappears out the back.

"You are not fooled," Goli commands those around him, and they all wag their heads, "No, no, yes, yes."

The hall empties of the men, who go to the veranda to chew betel and chew over the latest gossip. Inside, the women sit to eat, including Vani, whose bright chatter is not dulled by the events of the morning. Janaki receives a welcome bonus: Vani's story changes today. Now the dacoits cut off their own thumbs as part of their initiation ritual. Their weapons are adapted. Vani's relative cooks and feeds them from his own hand, as he also does his thumbless lover, who had cut off her own digits as a gesture of unity with her first lover, killed young in a raid on a Hyderabad haveli. haveli. None of the other children had paid attention enough to realize they are lucky to be present at the change; none is paying attention now. None of the other children had paid attention enough to realize they are lucky to be present at the change; none is paying attention now.

Saradha has her daughter the next week. The house throbs and surges with children, children having children, children expecting children, steaming milk and screaming mouths and Vani's music, which beats like the sound of peace dovetailed with conflict.

Around this time, Sivakami is approached with a strange request. The neighbour two houses down, all of whose grandchildren have died at birth, asks Sivakami if she might birth her daughter's next child. Sivakami is insulted and flattered-decorum means she can't comply, while sympathy makes it difficult to turn the woman down. Gayatri hits upon a solution: if Sivakami can't lend her hands, she can lend her handiwork. Sivakami doubtfully offers the family one of the scenes she has worked, an episode in the life of Krishna, the invincible child. She threads beads onto a string and sews the ends to the piece to make a necklace. Her neighbours gracefully accept. Some weeks after the daughter of their house, with the talisman hanging around her neck, gives birth to a healthy child, Sivakami receives another request. Sivakami fulfills it but worries that there is something untoward in this. She hides it from Vairum, who doesn't pay much attention to the comings and goings of women and children from their house. She is not sure why she is uncomfortable disclosing the new vogue: perhaps because it is superst.i.tious behaviour and she knows how he feels about that. Perhaps because she is helping others to have children.

Sivakami readies Thangam to go to Malapura. It has been thirty days since Krishnan's birth and so it's time for Goli to fetch her, but Thangam and Sivakami know how this usually goes: the packing and waiting, the unpacking and being taken off guard. This time, though, things might be different, since Goli hasn't left Cholapatti in the weeks since his arrival.

He sleeps at the local chattram, not only dropping in on Sivakami more frequently than ever he did when he lived nearby, but occasionally convening his cronies around the veranda, where he tosses out schemes and schematics, logics and logistics, and figures vague or specific but always theoretical. The small group of men around the veranda is composed, Muchami tells Sivakami, of men who have faith in him despite that earlier mishap, including a couple who are hoping that, if they support him a little more, they might make their money back.

Sivakami hears, via eavesdropping and Muchami, Goli promoting a train-wheel foundry; a touring, and then a stationary, rice mill; a stationary, and then a touring, cinema; a stable of stud bulls; and a soap and petticoat depot.

Now: Sivakami is no businesswoman, though she keeps well abreast of Vairum's instructions to Muchami with regard to the management of the lands. She rarely understands in advance how a purchase or sale or other strategic change will benefit them, but she more or less apprehends such matters in retrospect. She is also an excellent manager of household expenses, keeping Thangam's manjakkani entirely separate from her dowry, separate expenses and separate income. Weddings are paid for from the dowry lands and the children's daily expenses from the manjakkani, while Sivakami's own paltry expenses are paid by Vairum. She accounts for every paisa, recording these in a ledger kept in the floor desk in the main hall.

So Sivakami knows they are about to run a surplus on the dowry monies. The next wedding to be arranged is Sita's. She is ten, and were it not for a law recently pa.s.sed against child marriage, it would be time to marry her off. As it is, they now must wait four years. Why should that money sit gathering dust? Sivakami thinks, influenced, it seems, by this new spirit of investment and improvement inflating her son and son-in-law. She doesn't pretend to know any method of increasing money other than saving, nor does she think Goli has much money sense, but what if they were to support one of Goli's schemes, with Vairum as a collaborator of sorts? Vairum has such an instinct for finance that it would surely then succeed. Sivakami starts to imagine the money being transformed into comfort for Thangam and her children, and a rapprochement between Goli and Vairum. Maybe Goli could become independent of his employment income! Maybe they could settle down in one place. Maybe close to here. Deep in a sleepless night, she conjures a good life for the new baby, Krishnan, her beading forgotten in her lap.

The next day, she opens the subject as she serves Vairum his morning meal.

"Vairum, kanna, let me talk to you about something."

Vairum looks skeptical, as always with his mother, as though he has more important things on his mind. Sivakami serves the sambarpearl onion, his favourite-and bitter-gourd curry.

"You know that child-marriage outlawing nonsense means we must wait at least four years to marry Sita off," she says. "So we have a surplus of cash that you will surely double by the time we need it."

Vairum now looks wary.

Sivakami plunges on. "So I was wondering: why not give a show of family support? I know you will say your brother-in-law is not a good money manager..."

Vairum snorts at Sivakami's delicate understatement.

"... but if you were to give some advice, some consulting, he might do well. The schemes don't sound so far-fetched, and think how much it would mean to your sister." Sivakami is gaining confidence-Vairum is listening. "And really: that dowry money is under your management, but technically, it belongs to them."

At this last point of argument, Vairum's expression turns sour. "He does not need to be reminded of that, Amma, though it seems he doesn't dare remind us. Okay. I'll consider investing in the cinema. I've been thinking of something like that anyway. My own money, not theirs. For Thangam Akka. I have no confidence in my brother-in-law, but if this will shut him up, it might be worth it. It's obviously what he came here for. Maybe this will make him go away."

Sivakami overlooks the rudeness of the last in consideration of her victory. It's true that Goli has been obviously hoping to bring Vairum on board. Sivakami lets herself dream vaguely of a real success for Goli-a father capable of looking after his children, a man they can respect. Were she to force herself to think clearly and coldly about this, the fantasy would be unsustainable. She has seen no behaviour from Goli to make her believe in such a dream. But Vairum is dark, clear and cold, while Sivakami is none of these, and sees no need to be.