The aunt pulls Vairum toward her large face and booms, "Hallo, my boy, taking care of your father?" and then speaks to the others over Vairum's head. "This is the ugly one. His sister's out on the veranda."

Vairum wrenches away from her and barrels once more for the kitchen. Now he is intercepted by a neighbour, who wants him to eat a snack from a large tray she carries. He doesn't want any, but her grip on his arm is tight. When he tugs the captive limb free, it flings upward, slamming into the tray and sending its contents airward. Consistent with his generous nature, Vairum has distributed the snacks equally among all persons in the room.

Silence falls with a thud and awakens Hanumarathnam, who sits bolt upright from a mumbling sleep. With calm resolve, he seeks out Sivakami's eyes where she stands in the kitchen doorway. Across the mult.i.tude that separates them, he summons her with a slight movement of his head.

Now: no middle-cla.s.s Brahmin wife with any kind of breeding walks through the main hall and talks to her husband in front of guests, and today these guests include her sisters-in-law, who would subject her to no end of criticism, both to her face and behind her back, alone and in mixed company. Though Sivakami is spirited, brave and has had reason to feel encouraged in her life, she cannot obey her husband this time.

Instead, she silently iterates the names of the G.o.ds, her children's need for a father, Hanumarathnam's relative youth. She cannot completely banish, though, the feeling that if his time has come, she is powerless. How can she stop the progress of Yama's water buffalo?

Hanumarathnam looks at her a long moment, and her eyes are held in his. His sisters will later liken her to a frightened young goat, unable to move though a tiger walks toward it. A little part of them wants to hear her bawl like a captured kid, but this doesn't happen. They never see Sivakami cry. She doesn't permit it.

When Vairum ran into the house, Muchami had left on rounds of some landholdings. He has tried not to let the worries at the house keep him from his tasks. He goes along the ca.n.a.l that runs behind the houses, since he will not walk on the Brahmin street except in the company of a Brahmin, and at the end pauses a moment to spit a red stream of betel juice into the long, green gra.s.ses. As he straightens, his eyes grow wide. The largest water buffalo he has ever seen, its coat a l.u.s.trous pewter, its ma.s.sive horns curving out at their tips, is strolling along the Brahmin quarter, unaccompanied by cart or driver. Muchami moves to behind the temple and, mesmerized by the water buffalo's swaying hump, watches it until it is in front of Hanumarathnam's house. Then the servant pivots and darts back along the narrow path behind the Brahmin-quarter houses.

Inside the house, Hanumarathnam's head falls back, exhaling a word that sounds, to at least half the people in the room, like "podhail."

His sisters, standing closest to him, hear the word and their eyes meet. Podhail: buried treasure. The possibilities of that word occupy the sisters' thoughts as their younger, only, brother dies.

In that moment, Vairum, having run out to the garden in a tantrum, has kicked all the carefully cleared earth back into the hole under their house. He wets the earth with tears and stamps it and pounds it, his mouth pulled down in an ugly shape, until the place is packed flat. The child of the black-diamond eyes, his golden, oblivious sister, his tiny mother, his slim, dead father, their Muchami-buried forever. Podhail.

They will find Vairum here later, asleep with his head on the ground. They will awaken him, wipe his earth-streaked face and explain that now he is the man of the house. He will learn he has work to do.

Siddha Song 1904-1905.

IT IS INCREDIBLE TO SIVAKAMI that Hanumarathnam spent years preparing her for his pa.s.sing. She is shocked by the heat of bereavement: a pyretic pain behind her eyelids and in the unseen caverns of her body. She doesn't cry and is aware that observers, such as her husband's sisters, remark this. She feels she contains floods of tears, but they are boiled dry before they can spill.

And the house, too, is alight with funereal activity, the throngs of well-wishers turned chorus, ushering Hanumarathnam's spirit forward. Sivakami is bidden to wear her best clothes, her finest jewels, during the ten days it will take for that to happen.

His body is dressed in new, unsoiled clothes such as are worn only by the dead and taken to the cremation ground. Little Vairum will light his father's pyre. This is one reason everyone needs a son.

At the cremation ground, Sivakami does not tell her children that their father is within the blaze. This seems unnecessary. When Vairum runs ahead and picks something off the ground, Muchami slaps it from his hand. It is a bone, but no one explains this. As he throws a burning f.a.ggot on his father's pyre, Vairum is crying because Muchami wouldn't let him have that white stone.

A little shrine is built beside the Ramar, to house Hanumarathnam's soul. Thangam, her hair loose, like Sivakami's, to show their grief, learns to make rice b.a.l.l.s, which are offered daily at the tiny shrine. This is one reason everyone needs a daughter.

Sivakami tells her children that their father has gone away, and that the little shrine is like a playhouse where his soul lives, and the rice b.a.l.l.s are like pretend food for him. Thangam seems to like this idea. Over the thirteen days of mourning, brushing her long, unbound hair out of her face, she brings extra decorations for the shrine, some tiny play dishes and her own picture of baby Krishna. Vairum takes little interest.

Now that her husband is truly gone, Sivakami feels an odd eagerness for the ceremonies that will brand her a widow. A woman whose husband dies before her is, in some cosmic, karmic way, responsible for his death, and must be contained. The best way to do this is to make her unattractive: no vermilion dot to draw attention to the eyes, no turmeric to rub on the skin for brightness, no incense to suffuse the hair, no jasmine bunches to ornament it. No hair to suffuse, but that comes later.

Still wearing the bright colours she now loathes, she is paraded down the main street to the Kaveri, escorted by her father, her eldest brother and Vairum. On the riverbank, in a ceremony as old as men and women, her brother tears Sivakami's blouse at the back, and she is made to remove it. She unties the saffron thread of the thirumangalyam and drops it into the pot of milk her son holds for her. She feels her bile rise and viscerally understands why her wedding pendants' hot anger might need to be cooled.

She will never see those gold medals of wifehood again. All her bright silk saris are packed with neem and other bitter leaves against moths. Thangam will receive them someday, and the wedding gold melted down and transformed. No one wants to waste gold.

Sivakami accepts the two white cotton saris that will be her only garments and her badge.

She watches Vairum as she goes through each stage of her transformation : see, I am I am to blame, it is to blame, it is my fault my fault-everyone thinks so. She offers her yoked shoulders for this burden: see, my son, it wasn't you. thinks so. She offers her yoked shoulders for this burden: see, my son, it wasn't you.

On an appointed night, Sivakami waits in the courtyard while the rest of the house falls asleep. She sits and looks into the dark, the cotton of the new sari still stiff. It chafes against her bare and tender b.r.e.a.s.t.s but will soften with many washings. She combs out her hair with her fingers. Curly and unruly, it tumbles past her waist. Not as long as some women's, but quite long, considering how wilful it is. She wishes her hands felt like her husband's, stroking her hair, but one's own touch can never have that delicious strangeness.

She has a feeling suddenly of being very, very large, twenty times larger than the average woman. Her hands, when she holds them up, look small and far away. The night is cool on her face and she feels both drowsy and unpleasantly alert.

The courtyard door opens. She jumps up and takes the kerosene lamp from the blackened wall niche. She holds it out to see: the one she waits for has come.

She motions to another doorway; beyond it is the garden. The barber follows her there.

He has brought a small wooden stool. She seats herself. The moon is scant days from its darkest phase so he needs the lamp with its flame leaping large and greasy.

He is experienced and efficient and has kept dozens of such appointments, and before he begins, he says, "Amma. I'm sorry."

As he lifts the first hank from her neck, Sivakami's deprived body thrills to the sensation, and the shame of this thrill makes her glad that he is cutting it off. Then he begins shearing her head, leaving only a quarter-inch pelt to protect her delicate scalp.

It is complete. She has finished the crossing from sumangali, married woman, to aamangali, aamangali, widow. widow.

The barber cleans up and departs with the dignity of those who do the work the world despises. The locks he gathered will be sold as hairpieces. Sivakami bolts the courtyard and garden doors, then douses herself with buckets of cold water. Barbers are untouchables and she has been temporarily reduced to his status. The water makes her an untouchable of another kind. From now on, she will be madi, maintain a state of preternatural purity from dark to dark, so that no one may touch her after her pre-sunrise bath until the sun sets. And she will be as invisible as any untouchable in the Brahmin quarter, going to her river bath in pre-dawn dark, returning before light so as to spare her neighbours the sight of a widow. Such a bad omen.

She drops the bucket over and over into the blue-black iris of the well, still feeling the barber's fingers in her phantom hair. Her eyes are terribly dry.

As she finishes, she hears a sound from the sheltered corner of the courtyard where Muchami sleeps when he stays the night. She holds the lamp up. Muchami is turned to the wall, weeping. This is not the first time she has seen him thus since Hanumarathnam died. A twinge of affection shakes her head. She almost reaches out to touch him: her head has been touched by a non-Brahmin man, why should she not touch the head of one? Is there a separation any longer between Muchami and her?

Yes, there is. Muchami still has his middle-caste status, while she, now, is so pure as to be an outcaste. They never touch, not even accidentally, for the duration of their separate and inseparable lives. The barber is, she thinks with revulsion, the only man permitted now to touch her regularly: he will return, every few months, to ensure her continued ugliness.

She goes to lie beside her children. Vairum stirs and reaches for her thirumangalyam. He only occasionally still nurses, but playing with her pendants is a remnant of babyhood, and he reaches for them whenever he feels insecure. Frustrated at not finding them, he bats at her neck. Sivakami shushes him and presses him close, easing him back into sleep.

She keeps her breathing shallow so as not to disturb him, her chin lightly touching the top of his silky head, as the night slides and blurs against tears that will not free themselves.

The crowds eventually drizzle away. Sivakami's brothers depart, after receiving Sivakami's pledge that she will move back to their village, Samanthibakkam, to their father's house, where they can help her manage her affairs. A woman alone is a target, they say, and she agrees. The shrine is dismantled and Sivakami tells her children that their father has sent a telegram saying that he has reached the stars and must continue travelling. He is studying the heavens and doesn't know when his researches will be completed, when he'll be allowed to return home. Even if the G.o.ds let him go, she tells them, we won't recognize him because he no longer has his body. The children appear doubtful but ask no questions. They look hurt, and Sivakami tells them Hanumarathnam didn't undertake this journey by choice, but she doesn't sound convinced.

Sivakami's brothers return for her three days later, weeks sooner than they had agreed. Their mother has been ruined by Sivakami's widow-making, and is on her deathbed. At the time of the marriage, her husband had told her what Hanumarathnam had said and implied that worrying about his horoscope would be an indication of her ignorance. She felt that if Sivakami had better timed her son's birth, none of this would have come to pa.s.s. As Sivakami's mother, she, too, was to blame. Who knew what karmic drama was being replayed thus to punish them? For clearly they were being punished.

In her lucid periods, she tells her sons not to permit Sivakami to visit. She doesn't want to see her daughter in white, she says, with shaven scalp, no ornament or decoration save for a streak of holy ash on her forehead. But in her sleep she cries out over and over for Sivakami, her youngest, her only girl.

Sivakami craves her mother, but she is ashamed to be seen in widow's whites; she feels guilty for the tension in her brothers' faces. She has failed; her family did not thrive. But she wants to kneel and put her head in her mother's lap, just as her own little boy does in hers, to feel her mother's hand stroking her head. She is only eighteen years old.

Thangam and Vairum go next door to stay with Annam and Vicchu, and Sivakami's brothers escort her to Samanthibakkam for a visit.

When Sivakami arrives, her mother is awake. Shrunken and wasted, she lies on a cot while her eldest daughter-in-law, Kamu, reads to her and the youngest, Ecchu, presses her feet. At Sivakami's appearance, her mother shuts her eyes and rolls onto her side, clutching her knees to her stomach and moaning, "Oh my daughter, oh my youngest, oh my dearest, youngest child, my golden girl."

Behind her, Sivakami's brothers whisper, "You see, that's what she does. Come, bathe and eat." Sivakami obeys, but she knows her mother is watching her. Sivakami's father stands in the puja room. He counts off mantras on his beads, and every five rounds, he makes a mark in a book. Sivakami sees him on her left, then sees herself in the cracked shaving gla.s.s outside the kitchen on her right. She inherited the stiffness of her shoulders from him.

In the next few days, Sivakami and her mother have two or three private audiences. During one, her mother extracts a promise, then falls asleep. Sivakami slips her moist hand into her mother's dry one, though she should be observing madi, and somehow falls asleep herself, her shaven head half-resting on her mother's hip, the crumpled white cotton of her sari shrouding the rich maroon of her mother's. Her face, at rest, is as pouty, self-absorbed and carefree as that of the adolescent she might, in another life, have still been. The next day, her mother dies.

The same funeral procedures that they so recently observed for her husband now follow for the mother: new clothes, a pyre, a little shrine like a dollhouse. Sivakami makes the rice b.a.l.l.s and recalls her daughter's small hands and the care Thangam applied to this task. She works to apply herself as her little girl did. And now, Sivakami cries. She weeps at the shrine and at night and alone in corners, expecting and receiving little comfort from her brothers and their wives, who are sensitive enough to leave her alone, nor from her father, who has his own burdens. She cries for her mother in this house where she is a child.

After nearly three weeks at her father's house, though, she must return to Cholapatti and her children, to pack up their lives.

Back in Cholapatti, she and Muchami decide that, after she and the children have moved, he will periodically collect the paddy percentages from the tenants. He will take his own share and those of the two remaining old servant couples. He will then sell the balance, tie the cash in a cloth and toss it through one of the high windows into the front room. The house, thoroughly padlocked, will function as a giant safe, and every few months, Sivakami will return to count the income and put it in the real safe, which sits in the northwest corner of the main hall.

Annam, Hanumarathnam's aunt, will set out the daily offering for the monkeys, which tradition Sivakami believes she inherited from her late mother-in-law, yet another expression of reverence for Hanuman, Rama's monkey devotee. Since the house will be locked, that daily offering will have to replace Sivakami's daily pujas for the Ramar.

Murthy is still grieving, so dramatically that Sivakami would resent it if he weren't so sincere. "He was my brother," she hears him sighing whenever she goes to talk to Annam or Rukmini. "Ah"-she sees him pinch the bridge of his nose and sniff loudly-"but not even he could dispute what was in the stars." Annam and Rukmini smile consolingly at Sivakami, almost as if in apology, but she is mute.

Muchami is bearing up bravely. He avoids meeting Sivakami's eyes because he thinks she looks like tragedy. He has had his own head shaved to a half-inch too. He has worn only white since coming into their service, so he cannot adopt white garments in mourning, but he robes himself in a look of bereavement.

Vairum now is insatiable in his need for attention. At night, Sivakami holds him. He has stopped looking for her thirumangalyam but instead plays with her index and middle finger, obsessively and rhythmically twirling them through his own until he falls asleep. During the day, though, from sunrise to sunset, he is not supposed to touch her. These are the new rules. When Vairum comes to her for the comfort of her lap, she must back away from him, offering explanations he doesn't accept. Finally, he gets angry and slaps out at her knee or her hand, and once, her head. This is not mere violence, it is sabotage : she must bathe again and wash her sari. From time to time, she gives in and permits him the lap, since she will have to bathe anyhow. This sometimes happens twice in a day, so that her saris haven't time to dry. Vairum gets damp, sitting in her lap and holding onto her; they both catch cold.

The day before their departure from Cholapatti, Sivakami has just finished her penultimate puja for the Ramar, asking the stalwart G.o.ds to guard their home in her absence. Her needs at her brothers' house will be few, and she intends to return to Cholapatti every four or six months to look after the business. She is taking only a single trunk-no pots, no furniture, no jewels. She has only the two white saris, one of which she will wear, and the children's clothes hardly fill one-third of the trunk; they have many clothes, but they are small children. She is also taking a book, the Kamba-Ramayanam, the Tamil telling of that epic story, the only book she reads.

She fetches the keys to the safe. This gesture, too, is enveloped in nostalgia. As she lifts the loose brick between the doors to the garden, revealing the keys beneath, she permits herself to wallow in memory, as in sun-warmed mud: her first week as a bride, newly come of age, learning to be mistress of her own house; her husband's delight at showing her the Dindigul safe. Dindigul: a brand to rely on.

There are four iron keys, only two of which are key-shaped. Another is a rounded stick, like a hairpin, and the fourth is flat, a lever. Hanumarathnam had deposited the bundle of keys in her palm and pointed to the safe without a word, challenging her to figure it out. She had poked and tickled and pounded the safe, neither wholly haphazard nor exactly methodical, but determined. Finally, Hanumarathnam had wrested the keys back from her, near helpless with laughter, and shown her the way: 1. Use the flat stick to remove the screw from the trim on the top right-hand side of the door.2. Poke the rounded stick into the hole and the "L" in the safe's nameplate will pop loose, revealing a keyhole.3. Insert the key with the clover-shaped end and turn it once counterclockwise. Pull open the front of the safe. Within you'll find a second, smaller door with a keyhole in the conventional place, halfway up on the left side.4. Turn the second key a half turn clockwise in this hole, just until you feel a soft click.5. Slide the flat stick between the door and the wrought iron trim on its left edge. The lever will catch and the inner door pop open.

It sounds like her heart popping open. She feels her shoulder blades locking across her back. From the safe's inner sanctum drifts the scent of sandalwood.

She takes out the bundles of ancient palm leaves on which were recorded mysteries of the universe: her husband's treasures. She pushes their clothes aside and puts the palm-leaf bundles in the bottom of the trunk even though he didn't give her the keys to unlock these mysteries. Now she takes out a slim sandalwood box. It contains the leaves on which the children's astral portraits are scratched. She doesn't open the box, just lifts it quickly from the safe and drops it in the trunk, among the children's clothes. She shuts up the safe and the memories and the scent. She shuts the trunk lid on the little clothes, and her spare sari, and the scent. She lifts her hand to her nose. The smell of the soft, golden wood is upon her fingers.

The children play in the sun on the veranda. A familiar shadow darkens the light from the front door. Her hand falls from her face and resentment and fear rise in her throat: it is them again, the siddhas. She wonders if they know that her husband is dead. She has not allowed herself to be seen.

Before she decides whether to move to the door, the siddhas begin to sing, accompanied by a little dholak dholak drum, finger cymbals and a rough lute. Their voices are more strident than melodic, yet everyone on the Brahmin quarter will hum this tune, without admitting it, for weeks. drum, finger cymbals and a rough lute. Their voices are more strident than melodic, yet everyone on the Brahmin quarter will hum this tune, without admitting it, for weeks.

Where there is onion, pepper and dry ginger What is the use of other remedies?Pus and filth, thick red blood and fat Together make an ugly smelling pitcher.A few morsels for the cremation fire am ILike a bubble that arises on the surface of water and perishes, So indeed perishes this unstable body.Salt will dissolve in water Be one with the incomparable.The wish to master science does not halt I wish to master powers undissolved To transform all the three worlds into shining gold.

Use as your riding beast the horse of reason Use as your bridle, knowledge and prudence Mount firmly your saddle of anger and ride in bright serenity.When there is no solace in the world There is still solace In the holy names of the lord who rides the bull ...

The song's undertow pulls Sivakami to the open door, but the siddhas have already begun to move off. They travel the length of the Brahmin quarter, singing.

At the end of the street, they keep walking, but one of them-which?-calls out mockingly, "Here is a body, feed it!"

PART TWO.

Her Father's House 1905.

AT HER FATHER' S HOUSE in Samanthibakkam, where her brothers live with their families, Sivakami takes on the lion's share of household work. The cotton of her saris grows thick and soft with washing. She draws the end over her head, sheltering her scalp from the sun or stray looks: white reflects all sunlight, any incidental looks glance off her. Bad omen. Her narrow shoulder blades protect her heart from the back and her sari now protects it from the front.

Others might have dwelled or moped or made life difficult for themselves and others, but Sivakami has tucked her grief away. No one expects her to chit-chat. As part of her extra-pure madi state, she has also resolved never to eat food cooked by any other person, so she volunteers to cook for all of them. Since she cooks very well, her sisters-in-law are only too happy to give the kitchen responsibilities to her.

Kamu, her eldest brother's wife, had childhood polio that left her with one foot shrivelled and bent so that she walks, rolling, on its callused "top." She is a bit loud and demonstrative for Sivakami's taste, but also very kind. Sivakami likes her a lot, and wonders if it is, in part, their temperamental differences that make Kamu so appealing. Sivakami also admires Meenu, married to her second brother, who is brisk and busy, as industrious as her husband, at least in non-domestic matters. Their considerable energy is focused at present on their burgeoning traffic in Ayurvedic remedies for new mothers. They are packaging a gripe water brewed with fennel seeds, and "Cure-All Concentrate," garlic and sweet herbs reduced in ghee to a medicinal paste, said to shrink the womb and enhance milk production.

Sivakami is as fond of Kamu and Meenu as she is suspicious of Ecchu, Subbu's wife. Her youngest brother is also the sweetest, a gentle and incorruptible soul who always gives in to the children's clamouring for candy or soda pop. Ecchu is stingy, but too insecure to tell Subbu to cease his indulgences. Instead, she mutters reprimands she refuses to clarify or repeat. For Kamu, housework is strenuous; for Meenu and Ecchu, it is an inconvenient distraction. Sivakami is given full rein.

Sivakami's concerns for her children in the aftermath of their father's death are soon allayed. Vairum's cousins accept and include him as the Cholapatti children never did. Vairum is thrilled and opens himself entirely to the clique. He is out of the house every day, running and playing, coming in for lunch and a nap, too hungry and tired to think of anything else, and then only returning after sunset, so he and Sivakami no longer clash over her madi state. By the time she calls him home, she is able and glad to enfold him in her embrace. Thangam seems little affected by her surroundings and indeed keeps much the same routine as she did in Cholapatti, sitting on the veranda with admirers cl.u.s.tered round.

One of the children's favourite pastimes is trade. Cowries are coveted items, and the rarity of a gla.s.s soda bottle stopper with the wax rubbed off makes it valuable, though a marble is more easily utilized. Girls tend to go for long and colourful feathers, boys for unidentified metal objects. Once in a long while, the skull of a bird or mouse makes the rounds, and bidding is fierce. Vairum lets his small treasures go at bargain prices, gaining the reputation of a sucker... but everyone likes a sucker.

Most coveted of all is money, because it is the only item of currency with equal value in a child's and an adult's realm. Money breaks barriers, and Vairum puts this principle into effect as soon as he figures it out. When he is the one his uncle Subbu favours with a coin, Vairum runs immediately to his companions and asks how they would like him to spend it. Suggestions usually centre on a round of candy.

Vairum has also discovered a talent: he has an instinct for elementary arithmetic. He amuses himself and the other children by doing long calculations and reciting litanies of large numbers. Unlike in Cholapatti, here he is appreciated for who he is, so as he discovers his gifts, they blossom. He is becoming, in small increments, who he was born to be.

The House Safe 1906.

WHILE SIVAKAMIIS SETTLING HER CHILDREN at her father's house, Muchami, in Cholapatti, tends to business alone. This is the role for which he was intended-Sivakami's right-hand man.

Every few days, he collects the rent of some tenant or other. Someone is always late, or needing to make a partial payment; schedules are flexible. He makes rounds every day and has no difficulty keeping track. The tenants pay in paddy, when they harvest paddy, and silver the rest of the time. If Muchami receives paddy, he converts it to silver, as agreed. Hanumarathnam required all his tenants to plant a variety of crops, so they would have steady incomes and continually rich soil. Some landlords encourage the planting of entire fields with single crops they consider up-and-comers, convincing tenants with promises of jackpots. Always, the tenant goes into debt within five years, and the landlord ends up profiting from a protracted legal battle. When Muchami had asked Hanumarathnam if he was interested in this, he was relieved to hear that his employer disapproved.

As he and Sivakami agreed, he bundles the collected coins in paper and tosses the packet through one of the high windows of the main hall, which are barred and shuttered, except for one. Sometimes it lands with a thud and sometimes with a ring and spinny clatter, depending on how well he has folded the packet and how strong the sc.r.a.p of paper he used. Either way, all the silver morsels are safe inside the stronghold.

He makes a deposit whenever the pile of collected coins becomes too great for him to carry in the waist-roll of his dhoti, about twice a week. Before doing so, he goes to the courthouse veranda to locate the scribe Hanumarathnam retained before his death. There are men on the Brahmin quarter whom Hanumarathnam could have recruited as volunteers, friends who would have been happy to help Sivakami with business matters, but he had thought it best not to give them responsibility or information.

Though Muchami cannot read, he's no slouch in the math department, at least for the purposes of business. Still, he has the squatting-squinting scribe double-check his tally sheet and record it in longhand, next to the place where he himself recorded it in numerals. When the sheet starts to get worn and torn, Muchami has the scribe write at the bottom, "All fine. R. Muthuswami," and address an envelope. Muchami inks his thumbprint above his name, the paper practically refolds itself and Sivakami receives it regular as trains out of Madras station.

In the fourth week after Sivakami leaves, Muchami is rising from doing his business with the scribe and notices the customer behind him giving him an odd smile. He nods; Gopalan is from his own caste community, and they meet most evenings in the market, along with everyone else interested in the news of the day.

"Rent, is it?" Gopalan remarks casually.

Muchami gives him a vague and uncomprehending smile. After Muchami leaves, Gopalan confirms with the scribe, whose code of professional ethics includes nothing about confidentiality, that he had been writing the names of Sivakami's tenants next to numbers that could plausibly be plot rents.

That evening, Muchami and Gopalan are both among the men cl.u.s.tered around the circular stone bench in the centre of the Kulithalai market.

Gopalan asks loudly, "What do you do with the silver, Muchami?"

Muchami waves at him in friendly acknowledgement and continues paying careful attention to a vendetta story being related by a man beside him.

"Hoy, Muchami! Muchami-o!" Gopalan is not to be put off, and his cronies are also intrigued, since he has, of course, told them as much as he knows, on which information they have speculated as extensively as they are able. They move over to engulf Muchami. "Where do you keep the coins? Are you putting them in one of your mother's pots?"

It would be no good to have word get around that he is storing Sivakami's silver in his mother's house. It doesn't occur to Muchami to suggest he is depositing the money with a bank or moneylender. He must decide rapidly, and so, since he thinks their system is a good one, he opts against his better instincts to tell the curious men the truth.

"No, all the money goes back in the house. It couldn't be more secure, no one in the village has keys to the padlocks, and you know there are several doors on each side. It's as good as a safe. Anyway, Sivakami Amma will come back from time to time and put it all in the real safe inside. A Dindigul safe. The whole thing is impenetrable."

The men are nodding evaluatively.

"But how do you put the money in the house?"

"Oh, there is a way." Muchami makes as if to go.

"Where there's a way in, there's a way out." Gopalan prods.

"No, no, this is a way only to put the money in," Muchami says, trying to turn away. "It can't be taken out the same way, no."

"A hole in the wall?"

"A chute?"