Kamalam is frowning. "Why... ?"

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

Sita shouts back, "What?"

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

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

"By the well, just for a second, really." Janaki watches her mother, who doesn't react.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He's going to get his comeuppance one of these days," Goli says by way of reply.

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

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

Janaki, wincing at his inelegant Tamil, listens harder.

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

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

"The man wants to start a revolution, that's what," Goli cries. "He wants to be king."

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

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

"All right, all right," says the first Brahmin. "Let's take it easy. You can rest a.s.sured that most if not all the Brahmin quarter shares your opinion, Goli."

"What a week," Goli complains.

"Have you been to see Ch.e.l.lamma?" someone asks, and Janaki starts.

"Last night. She won't budge," Goli growls. "b.i.t.c.h."

Janaki gapes at the crude language, feeling sick.

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

"So don't pay," the first Brahmin man advises.

"She's got me over a barrel," Goli says darkly. "She'll go to my boss."

"What-" the man starts, but Goli breaks in: "Deal. I'm done talking about that."

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

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

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

"Lads, I'm sorry to say I must take my leave of you now."

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

"Sorry, you'll have to face your wives without it. Not the first time, I would say."

More hoots.

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

Nallathumbi makes his reb.u.t.tal. "Naked, I inspire men and frighten women. Just as it should be."

They all laugh, satisfied. Goli takes his leave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bharati's younger brother and three sisters are cl.u.s.tered in a corner around their grandmother. Her mother, Ch.e.l.lamma, matches her house: she is a small, tidy woman with wrinkles around her eyes that seem to Janaki oddly familiar. She is not fat and slovenly; she is just... plain. And tough-looking. Her mouth is set in a hard line as she tells Goli, "Hand it over."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Pah!" Goli appears at a loss for words.

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

"Look at Bharati's forehead, her eyebrows, her hair," Ch.e.l.lamma says. "Do they not look familiar?"

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

Ch.e.l.lamma places the betel packets on another plate and, pulling her sari over her shoulder, offers it to Goli.

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

"So our business is concluded?" Goli asks Ch.e.l.lamma in a low voice.

Ch.e.l.lamma inclines her head, lowering her eyes and lifting them again. Goli touches her cheek. "I'll be around a few more days," he murmurs.

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

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

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

"I'm sorry," Janaki says.

"Me, too," Bharati quickly responds.

They are quiet for a few moments.

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

Bharati smiles a little, wearily. "You don't know much about us, do you?" she asks.

Janaki shakes her head quickly, holding her breath.

"I'm married already," Bharati begins.

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

"Uh-uh. Madurai."

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

"I didn't marry a man," Bharati continues. "We... in my caste, we marry a G.o.d. There aren't too many of us around here-my grandmother came from Madurai-so she took us back there for my wedding ceremony."

"How did-you married a G.o.d?" Janaki frowns.

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

"What's ..." Janaki begins, realizing she can't tell Bharati's caste from her name. "What's your caste called?"

Now Bharati looks at her sharply. "We're devadasis, Janaki. You didn't know that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I guess."

"We're artistes." She pauses, then elaborates, sounding now as though she's making an argument, to Janaki or herself. "And we're good omens because we're nityasumangalis nityasumangalis-'forever married'-because a G.o.d never dies."

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

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

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

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

They are quiet.

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

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

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

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