"Everyone should," Kamalam says through a yawn, "but it's in G.o.d's hands."

Within minutes, Janaki can hear that her sister is asleep, while she lies awake an hour or more, choosing and examining moments from the day as though they were snapshots in a holiday alb.u.m.

The next day, Vairum takes them to his office in town, and then says the driver will take them shopping while he is in meetings. "Buy yourselves some new saris. Ask the salesmen what is fashionable-they will tell you. You can take the blouse pieces to Vani's tailor. And Janaki, get some nice fabrics to take to your husband's home, for quilts and cushions, that kind of thing."

Janaki has a gay time playing the young mistress. She feels a little frustrated at Kamalam's shyness, even while she enjoys being in charge. The younger girl stands always very close to and a little behind her sister, and tells Janaki to choose her saris and blouses for her. When they are finished, the driver skirts the city, taking them to Chromepet, where Vairum awaits them at a leather goods factory, one of a number in this district named for the chrome tanning process that took hold here late in the last century. The smell of leather, chemicals and dyes is faint outside but overpowering inside, even in the closed showroom at the upper reaches of the building. Janaki tries not to make a face and breathes shallowly as they browse the sandals. Vairum is on the company's board and has told them each to choose a pair while he finishes work.

Kamalam starts tapping her arm frantically. Janaki peers at her. "What?" But her sister runs out of the showroom and vomits in the hallway. Janaki, mortified, takes her outside to get some air while peons rush up to clean the mess. The driver opens the car doors the moment they appear. Janaki asks him to fetch some water.

Vairum comes out a few minutes later, looking concerned. "Kamalam? Are you all right?" He crouches beside the open car door and reaches in to feel her forehead. She starts and pulls away a little. Neither girl can remember ever having been touched by their uncle. He clicks his tongue and puts his hand again to her head. "You don't feel hot."

"I'm feeling better, Vairum Mama." Kamalam licks her lips. "I'm very sorry."

"Hm. Okay. Give me a couple of minutes to finish and we'll get you home to rest, all right? Good girl." He goes back into the factory, his dhoti snapping between his Jodhpuri jacket and huge black shoes.

"Are you really feeling better?" Janaki asks.

"It was the smell, I think," Kamalam whispers, not wanting the driver to hear, and shudders.

"Yes, horrible," Janaki says. "I don't know how he can stand it. Like a slaughterhouse or something, I imagine."

Each day of the visit, it seems, Vairum has some entertainment planned for them, and people of the city for them to meet. Often, guests come to his home: business a.s.sociates, people who wish him to support their causes, others with whom he has had some similar a.s.sociation in the past. They attend a concert at the Music Academy in the company of a burly, red-cheeked Dane, an investor in a fertilizer company Vairum is starting up, and a sallow Russian who will become its chief engineer. At the intermission, Vairum introduces them to luminaries, including C. Rajagopalachari, former premier of Madras, and still one of the top men in the Congress Party, and Kalki Krishnamurthy, who has published articles and stories in the weekly magazine Ananta Viketan Ananta Viketan for as long as Janaki can remember. Gayatri and Minister now subscribe to the new periodical, for as long as Janaki can remember. Gayatri and Minister now subscribe to the new periodical, Kalki, Kalki, that he started after his release from jail last year. Janaki, taking her cue from Sivakami and Minister, disagrees with Kalki's politics: he is in favour of independence. Still, she can't help feeling impressed and has often enjoyed his lighter pieces. Rukmini Arundale is also in attendance and flutters up to monopolize Vairum, crowding his nieces to one side. that he started after his release from jail last year. Janaki, taking her cue from Sivakami and Minister, disagrees with Kalki's politics: he is in favour of independence. Still, she can't help feeling impressed and has often enjoyed his lighter pieces. Rukmini Arundale is also in attendance and flutters up to monopolize Vairum, crowding his nieces to one side.

On the car ride home, Vairum asks them, "So, I a.s.sume you girls recall why Mr. Rajagopalachari resigned his premiership, yes?"

Janaki and Kamalam are silent.

"Janaki?" Vairum peers at her, over Kamalam. "You need to learn to keep up. He objected to the British here declaring we were in the war on their side."

Janaki is not sure what to say and not sure he expects her to say anything.

"You've read Kalki's work, though?"

They both tell him yes.

"There are pros and cons to independence, but it is coming and we will manage. Interesting challenges ahead. I want to see what Congress does about caste. Completely outmoded. We'll never progress as a nation, self-governed or otherwise, unless we can stop thinking people's birth determines their worth."

The girls are rigid in their seats, and he looks over at them and laughs.

"You don't like this kind of talk? Get used to it. You've been brainwashed by your grandmother, closed up with her in that house, in that village. Why should people put up with Brahmins acting like they're better than everyone else? I wouldn't, in their place."

They arrive at the house and Janaki lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding. The car doors open. She looks at the driver as she gets out and he smiles at her with what now feels like threat. Are the lower orders planning a revolt? What's wrong with everyone being in their places, doing the work that suits them? She has never questioned her place. Muchami has never questioned his place, and he and Mari admire Brahmin ways, as they should.

She doesn't feel offended so much as confused. If people don't aspire to emulate the Brahmins, what would they aspire to?

The next day brings more visitors, some of whom come to hear Vani play in the evening: a young Punjabi Sikh couple, she in a pale grey salwar kameez, kameez, he in a high red turban, and two Tamil Muslim men. Janaki doesn't mind the Sikhs so much; they are practically foreign and have to speak to her in English, which she responds to in monosyllables. It feels very odd to sit in the salon with Muslims, though-are they even interested in Carnatic music? They appear highly educated and flow between English and Tamil in a way Janaki finds dizzying. It's like trying to listen to someone who, every few phrases, turns away and mumbles. he in a high red turban, and two Tamil Muslim men. Janaki doesn't mind the Sikhs so much; they are practically foreign and have to speak to her in English, which she responds to in monosyllables. It feels very odd to sit in the salon with Muslims, though-are they even interested in Carnatic music? They appear highly educated and flow between English and Tamil in a way Janaki finds dizzying. It's like trying to listen to someone who, every few phrases, turns away and mumbles.

Afterward, they all go to the Dasaprakash Hotel, where the Punjabis are staying. There, the girls have their first taste of ice cream. For the first time since leaving Cholapatti, Janaki sees a look of real pleasure on her sister's face. They are wearing their new saris and blouses-eyelet with puff sleeves-and look sweet, if not chic. The Punjabi woman, only a couple of years older than Janaki, seems to feel more comfortable with them than with the rest of the group, and they speak to one another and laugh at their halting English. Janaki is fascinated with the henna work on her hands: leaves and flowers, an intricate design such as she has never seen before, and asks how it is done. Vairum nods approvingly at their having made friends.

The next morning, Vairum tells them he'd like to take them to a couple of attractions. "You can't leave Madras without visiting the San Thome Cathedral and the Kapaleeswarar Temple. I've told Vani we're having our morning meal out, at the home of one of the a.s.sociates you met last night. Then we'll go see the sights."

Janaki can't think who he means: surely not one of the Muslims? But yes: the taller of the two men who came to hear Vani play last night. Mr. Sirajudeen greets them at the door of his home, slim and elegant in a pressed white jibbah, a skullcap on his silver hair. Unfamiliar smells wash over the girls as they enter the house and seat themselves on divans in the salon. The house is large and light, but doesn't otherwise look too strange: Janaki wasn't sure what to expect, but thought it would be more shocking and unhygienic.

Sirajudeen speaks more Tamil than he did last night, now that the company is less mixed, but still peppers his speech with English phrases.

"Mr. Sirajudeen is a close a.s.sociate of Rajagopalachari," Vairum tells his nieces, and then tells his friend, "They met him at the Music Academy the other night."

"Ah, yes. He's a rare Congressmen, one who takes Muslim concerns seriously." Sirajudeen smiles evanescently and rubs the corners of his eyes. "We talk often."

A bell sounds elsewhere in the house.

"Come," he says, standing. "We'll take brunch? We can eat at the table, or, if your nieces find it more homely, homely," he says the last in English, "we can sit on the floor as we usually do."

Vairum turns to them. "What do you prefer?"

They look back at him: what should they say?

"I think they can manage a table," Vairum says.

"Good, then."

There are four silver plates laid on the table, and a servant starts bringing rice and vegetables as they seat themselves.

"Pure vegetarian, of course," Sirajudeen a.s.sures them, but Janaki and Kamalam are still struck nearly motionless in their chairs. They recall having eaten out, years earlier, at a non-Brahmin place while staying with their parents. But they were children, and there was no food in the house, and their father told them to. But why eat in the home, at the table, of a Muslim, by choice? They're not even eating from banana leaves, but from plates other Muslims have probably used. One layer of contamination on another.

Kamalam is looking at Janaki to see what she should do. Sirajudeen bids them, "Eat, children," and he and Vairum resume chatting intensely about construction materials or some such thing. Janaki looks at her plate and sees there are two curries, one wet, one dry, two pacchadis, of cuc.u.mber and green mango, and the rice with a kootu- kootu-like sauce on it. The worst thing to do would be to take the rice. Perhaps she can simply avoid it. But there's not much harm in eating raw vegetables and fruits. She nibbles on the pacchadis. Kamalam does the same.

Mr. Sirajudeen finally looks over at a pause in their conversation, and asks, "What's wrong? You're not hungry? Not feeling well."

"No, no," Janaki says politely. "We're eating, we're eating. Thank you."

He looks at them, narrows his eyes a little and inclines his head to his own plate, nodding slightly. He has guessed what is wrong, and he is offended.

Vairum glares at them, his nostrils flaring above his wide moustache. "Go on, eat!"

Janaki smiles at him and eats a pinch of green mango with salt and lemon. Vairum points at her rice; she shakes her head.

There is a silence between the men for a time, then Vairum breaks it. "Delicious. Please tell your wife."

"Certainly," Mr. Sirajudeen says without looking at any of them, and then changes the subject.

"That was a mistake," Vairum expostulates as he slams his car door. "I thought you might not humiliate me in front of my good friend, but, no-you're worse than your grandmother! You're part of a new generation. Freedoms, to know people, to travel-does this mean nothing to you?"

Again, Janaki can't think of any response and doesn't think Vairum wants one. Would he really have her turn her back on all the values of her childhood?

"Answer me," he bellows, and she jumps.

"I ... I owe Amma my life," she says. She has never said it aloud, but she knows it to be true.

"Many people have given you many things," he says pointedly, and she blushes, thinking of her wedding, "but your life is your own now".

Janaki thinks this is a very strange notion: she belonged to her family, who kept her in trust to give to her husband. Since when does anyone invent their own values? She is getting a very strange feeling from her uncle.

"We don't have to live as Brahmins have for eight thousand years." He sighs hard and looks out the window. "Don't you like the excitement of the city, the sense of possibility?"

"Yes, Vairum Mama," she quickly replies, but he doesn't look at her and she is left to her thoughts. Eight thousand years. She can't fathom it. She thinks of the day each year when a family honours its dead and tries to imagine eight thousand years of grandparents, but the only foremother she has really known is her amma, and she is not sorry she honoured her by refusing food in the Muslim's house, though she will never tell Sivakami about the incident. She was sorry to hurt Mr. Sirajudeen's feelings-he seemed like a nice man. But what did he expect, really? She feels a pang of homesickness and then starts to worry: Vairum invited her for this holiday so that she'll fit into her husband's family better. Will this kind of thing be expected of her in her new home?

Vairum no longer feels like touring sites with them. He has the driver drop him at his office and take the girls to the church and temple by themselves. The church is wondrous and unfamiliar, and the temple magnificent and comforting. They return home in good spirits. Vairum is out, and won't return until late, so they have tiffin alone with Vani.

Janaki had not been sure whether Vani would keep up her storytelling habit throughout her time in Madras-what does she do when Vairum is not at home for a meal, tell the tales to the cook? During their visit, though, Vani spins her old magic, telling a story of a young woman, a relative of hers, whose husband pa.s.sed away while she was pregnant. The child, however, grew, as did his elder brothers, to look uncannily like the dead husband: his features, his voice, his manner. Soon they took over the running of the household just as her husband had done, while she, grown dim in age, forgot her tragedy and thought her husband returned to her, multiply. Although the men married, she never recognized their wives.

Today, the story changes, and the child dies at birth. The husband, traumatized, regresses, becoming more and more childlike with the years, and the wife plays along, becoming, in increasing degrees, like a mother to him. Their elder sons, though, come with time to look and sound just like the man their father once was, and she finds them wives who agree to dress the same as her, as well as adjusting their hair and manner to imitate her own. The story ends with both wives pregnant.

Janaki is disturbed. There is a strange light in her aunt's eye, an intensity to her telling, in the reversal, that makes the story sound less like the entertaining and impersonal mysteries Janaki remembers and more like an allegory of the psyche.

She has been preoccupied, since that night at Adyar Beach, with Vani's childlessness and with her isolation with Vairum here in Madras. She is increasingly convinced that this is an unnatural way to live: no parents, no children, no relatives nor even neighbours of their own caste and community, meeting strangers every day, strangers who want something. Vairum seems so enamoured of this loneliness and anonymity, but now Janaki is fearful of what it is doing to their aunt, and maybe even to their uncle.

She knows Vani grew up in a sophisticated household, but also that she had thrived, as much as the grandchildren had, in the order of their Cholapatti home. Her affection and regard for Sivakami was visible. With children and neighbours, she was never alone, even when Vairum was away overnight. Maybe Vairum thinks Thangam's children reminded Vani of the baby they lost, but what if it was better for her, not having a child of her own, to be surrounded by children? She had always been eccentric but had seemed content. Now she crackles with some weirdness. Kamalam, too, has noticed it.

"Vani Mami is not happy," she tells Janaki tonight, as they take out the postcards they bought that day.

Janaki nods. "I know. I'm not even sure she's well."

There is little more they can say: what can they do, two young girls? Whom would they tell? They trade off the postcards, writing notes to Sivakami, Muchami and Gayatri, about the sights and wonders of the city by the sea.

They have four days left, which pa.s.s without major incident. A trip to Madras Beach, where they eat roasted corn and take in such curiosities as a two-headed girl in a boxlike theatre; another ice cream at the Presidency Club, where Vairum plays tennis. One evening, Janaki, inspired by the Punjabi woman, crushes henna leaves from the garden into the finest paste she can, and extrudes it from a paper roll onto Kamalam's hands. On one hand, she does a pattern of lotuses and mango leaves; on the other, a zigzag, replicating the pattern on the souvenir sh.e.l.ls they took from Adyar Beach. Vairum laughs when he sees her art, so different from the large, crude dots that are customary in the south. "So you are capable of departing from tradition!"

Janaki laughs, too.

"Do Vani's hands also, why don't you?" he asks.

Tickled, she agrees.

On their last evening, Janaki reminds Vairum that he had wanted to hear them read from the English book. Kamalam had begged her not to bring it up, but Janaki felt it was an obligation, and welcomed the challenge, so like school. She missed school terribly. Kamalam didn't. Janaki has also started inserting, from time to time, an English word in her speech, though she blushed a little when Kamalam looked at her quizzically.

"Ah, it's all right," Vairum says, waving them off. "I'm sure you've learned many things no book will ever tell you."

The three look at one another sombrely, knowing each takes away very different impressions of this holiday, though these impressions are, nonetheless, shared.

Vairum had planned to drive them back to Cholapatti but must attend to a water dispute that is turning ugly and affects several of his concerns. He asks if they might be able to take the train. The couple who cook for him are due for a trip home; he'll give them leave to escort them. The girls tell him it will be fine.

The platform at Egmore Station is crowded with people fleeing the city for the villages, against rumours of attacks. Though the girls are fearful, Vairum looks at the hordes with something like disdain.

"No one will ever target Madras. It seems big to us, but it's a backwater in the world," he says, rolling his eyes and looking as if he wishes this weren't so.

Still, for every reason, Janaki and Kamalam are glad to be going home. That morning, a cook had arrived to replace the couple while they were away: a non-Brahmin. Janaki and Kamalam were aghast, though Janaki felt nothing should surprise them any more: now Vani had to eat this kind of food in her own home?

She's had quite enough of the city. Soon she will be home, and thence to married life. She hopes she is sufficiently prepared.

PART SEVEN.

The Tumbling Stars 1942.

"SO THE PRETTY YOUNG THINGS HAVE RETURNED, have they?" Gayatri ribs Janaki and Kamalam, who smile back. "How did you enjoy your trip? That was a nice gift, I must say."

"Yes," Janaki can agree on that. "It was a nice gift."

"Did you enjoy?" Gayatri prods. "What is their house like?"

"The house is very nice," Janaki says. "Modern, you know: modern stove, divans. Indoor toilet! So different. City life."

"Mm-hm," Gayatri frowns. "Almost too much, sometimes, no?"

"I enjoyed the holiday," Janaki insists. "Certainly, for two weeks, it was excellent. I'm not sure I would want to live in Madras."

"Oh, yes, I understand." Gayatri smiles, patronizing and warm. Janaki remembers hearing that her family was one of the first in the town of Kulithalai to install an indoor toilet. "Well, that's not too likely. I suppose, after a time, one just wants one's home, isn't it true?"

"I suppose." Janaki blushes.

"Not too long now, is it?" Gayatri leans forward a little. "Just a couple of months, and then you're off to your husband's! Your real home."

Her real home. After all these years of feeling she was living on credit-not just because she is a girl, but because she was being raised in her mother's natal home-Janaki is departing for the place where she truly belongs. She has been in safekeeping all these years, for this family she will now join.

Vairum and Vani were to have taken her to Pandiyoor by car but, at the last minute, a business crisis prevents Vairum from coming. There are not many male relatives appropriate to take his place: Murthy has grown increasingly dishevelled since Rukmini died, Janaki's brothers are unmarried; Sivakami's brothers are dead, and Vairum never liked to ask them for favours in any case. Instead, in a radical departure from tradition, he arranges for Baskaran to come and fetch his bride himself. Sivakami finds the plan disturbingly casual, and insists they will have at least a ceremonial handing-over, even if it takes place three steps from the veranda. She recalls that Thangam's in-laws came for her, but circ.u.mstances were such then that she didn't want to draw attention to the matter.

Janaki doesn't feel undervalued by the change in plans; on the contrary, it flatters her that Baskaran is willing to come himself. But the unconventionality worries her in the way that every departure from tradition does. On her last night within these borrowed walls, Janaki frets: will she measure up? Their trip to Madras made her feel more sheltered than ever. She lies awake, holding Kamalam's hand. Kamalam squeezes back, her face against Janaki's shoulder, crying silently.

The next morning, upon seeing Baskaran, with a brother and one of Vani's lawyer uncles, ready to escort her, she relaxes. His smile for her is rea.s.suring.

She takes leave of her grandmother, prostrating for her as Baskaran bows, palms together, at her side. She does the same for the Ramar. She hugs Kamalam, wiping tears from both their cheeks, saying she'll be back soon for a visit, not to worry. "Or you can come to visit me there! Please don't cry." Radhai, Krishnan and Raghavan come along to the station.

At the Kulithalai station, she is packed into a train compartment by Muchami and Baskaran, as carefully as she packed her trunks. Radhai and her brothers kiss her, and Muchami smiles at her long and affectionately, a smile she returns rather more quickly, with a little puzzlement at his apparent sentimentality. He holds the children back from the platform and they wave until the train is out of sight.

ON THE TRAIN, Baskaran's brother and cousin bury themselves in newspapers and lift their heads only to engage in heated debate with their compartment-mates on the subject of India's entry into the war on the British side: was independence worth such a sacrifice of lives and integrity?

Janaki is next to the window with Baskaran beside her so that no other man will sit next to her. Baskaran grubs in the left-hand pocket of his kurta and holds its contents out to her until she accepts. He boldly brushes her hand as she pulls it away.

It is a package, no bigger than her palm: slightly heavy, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. She tugs at the coa.r.s.e bow. It comes loose, and the soft thick paper opens to reveal a box of worked silver in the shape of a parrot.

Seeing it stirs some dim memory in her that she can't quite bring into focus. It's so touching that he planned a gift; what a shame it's so ugly. The bird looks vulgar and ill-intentioned. Perhaps parrots are not suited to being rendered in silver, she thinks.

"Do you like it?" he asks.