Vairum and Vani are coming to Cholapatti for the baby's naming ceremony-they didn't come for all the babies!', but Vairum has a special interest in Janaki's family. Generally, this interest pleases Janaki, but now she is dreading their arrival. While she had been confident of her right to decide who birthed her baby, she fears Vairum's reaction when he finds out she disobeyed her husband and failed to take advantage of modern methods. Vairum is so derisive about so many of their traditions, though not consistently: he and Vani still do a daily puja in their home and observe all the Hindu festivals. But this may be on Vani's initiative. Vairum is vocal, even at family gatherings, about his disdain for the way most of Sivakami's grandchildren live, in fulfillment of her legacy of orthodoxy.

She also feels a bit weak at the prospect of seeing Vani at the baby's naming ceremony. The last time she saw them was in Pandiyoor, two months after Visalam's pa.s.sing, six months after Vani's mother's own death. Vani had looked drawn and greyish, a little worse each time Janaki saw her. She still played beautifully but otherwise appeared listless, not even chattering much at mealtimes, though she occasionally mumbled something Janaki couldn't catch, something that might have been the fragment of a story. Janaki could only think of one explanation, Vani's despair at her barrenness.

From within the birth room, she hears them arrive at the front, greeted by Murthy, Baskaran, Minister and Gayatri, Radhai, Krishnan and Raghavan. Kamalam is staying with her in the birth room to help her and peers out, squinting against the sunlight from the open front door. Vairum bounds into the main hall and does a full-length obeisance for the Ramar, leaps up and calls to Vani, "Come! Come!"

Vani enters more shyly and does the same, and then stands beside Vairum as he beckons the family and neighbours to enter and calls out to his mother. "Amma! Come here."

Janaki and Kamalam are supposed to stay in the birth room, but they are too curious and know no one will notice if they peer around the door at Sivakami, who has inched up to the pantry door but refuses to come any farther in front of Murthy and Minister.

"Oh, Amma. You are going to have adjust your village ways if..." Vairum pauses dramatically and looks at everyone, "you are to come and visit us in Madras."

He enjoys everyone's bemus.e.m.e.nt for a moment: how will Sivakami get away, with all her responsibilities? Why would Vairum even think up such a scheme? The children wonder if they are going, too.

Janaki looks at Vani, who seems happy and peaceful: still thin, but untroubled. What is happening?

"It will be an extended stay, Amma, because we are very happy to tell you-" Vairum pauses again and breathes deeply-"that Vani is expecting."

Sivakami is staggered. Forgetting herself, she takes a step forward and holds out her arms. Vairum and Vani step into her light and unfamiliar embrace.

Late Surprise 1945-1946.

IN THE MONTHS LEADING UP TO HER DEPARTURE for Madras, Sivakami replays for herself again and again the moment when Vairum told her he and Vani would be parents once more, as though it is a prayer bead on the string she tells daily.

After his oblation for the Ramar, he had turned to her with a speed and intensity she found alarming, his eyes burning. She recalls that alarm now with amus.e.m.e.nt, and also remembers the warmth and the good humour of his glance. It made her shiver.

"We are going to have need of your services," he had said, after making the announcement. "You know I have no truck with superst.i.tion, but Vani has insisted that she will have no doctors and that your kai raasi must deliver our child. I don't have the power to deny her anything she wants." He threw his arms up happily, then continued in a softer, tenderer tone. "Since her mother died, there is no reason for her to go to Pandiyoor for childbirth and, in any case, she has always felt that you are as a mother to her."

Janaki had listened to the exchange with wonder mixed with relief: if Vairum was acceding to Vani's wish for Sivakami's lucky hands, he couldn't object to hers! And now she need not feel self-conscious at the blessing of her child: Vairum and Vani's witness will be an especially happy one. What marvellous news!

She and Kamalam talk about it that night as Janaki nurses her daughter. Vairum and Vani so needed this. Janaki is sure that if Sivakami delivers the child, it will be strong and healthy, though she is still concerned for Vani, who looked so ill so recently, and is thrity-five, an advanced age for child-bearing.

They agree that Sivakami should come to Madras a few months before the birth, to cook and care for Vani the way a mother would.

Kamalam will return to Visalam's in-laws' house. They have been clamouring for her to come back, especially Visalam's children, who have grown very attached. Saradha, who is well settled in Thiruchi, will look after the rest of her younger siblings there. She has a daughter a year older than Radhai, and Vairum had intended that Krishnan and Raghavan would soon go live in Thiruchi in any case, to attend English-medium schools there. Sita is pregnant and Vairum has invited her to come to Madras instead of Cholapatti for her delivery. Laddu still lives with his grandmother in Cholapatti and cannot leave: he has now been given responsibility for a rice mill. He will board at the chattram in Kulithalai, where he will have meals and company, as long as Sivakami is away.

Although there is little in her affairs that she needs to wrap up-Muchami will look after the tenants as usual and Vairum comes once a month or so-there is one matter she wants safeguarded. She entrusts a biscuit tin of completed beadwork pieces to Gayatri, those that are still requested, every month or two, by Brahmins along the quarter whose daughters are about to give birth. Sivakami still has never spoken of it to Vairum and has no reason to believe he knows.

She will take with her the scene she is at work on now: Krishna dancing on the five hoods of the monster cobra. This scene should be finished before Vani gives birth. Apart from that, she packs a satchel of snacks she has made as a gift for Vairum and Vani, and another, much smaller one, containing her spare sari, her copy of the Kamba-Ramanayanam, between whose pages she has stowed five ten-rupee notes, her beadwork and the small bra.s.s water jug she always drinks from, so as not to have to share a vessel.

MUCHAMI IS EXCITED FOR HER, but also concerned: Vairum is so unconventional. What if he forces Sivakami to do things that make her uncomfortable? She is not young any more, he thinks, as he weaves thatch to repair the cowshed roof. The least Vairum can do is permit her her ways.

He tears a piece of thatch by pulling it too hard and realizes he has been getting angry with Vairum before anything has even happened. He certainly did look happy, and Vani looked better than she has in years. Maybe their contentment and grat.i.tude for Sivakami's help will soften Vairum's radical edge.

He wonders how he will fill his days while she is gone.

"It will be quiet around here," he remarks to her late one morning.

His routine has altered considerably. He no longer has a child to look after, and Mari has been having health problems for the last year or two. She has been increasingly nervous and irritable, p.r.o.ne to dropping things and occasionally fainting. Sivakami has relieved her of many of her duties. Though he looks in during the day to make sure she's all right, Muchami prefers to leave their hut to her.

"Maybe I should go in for some other work: start a business. Can you see me in import-export?"

Sivakami laughs over the vegetables she is cutting. "You could do anything you want. Yes, I suppose the house hasn't been left empty since I went to live with my brothers-what's that, forty years ago?"

"A lifetime." Muchami walks to the garden door to spit a stream of betel juice into the growth.

"How did you stay busy back then?" she asks.

"I don't know," he says, trying to remember. "It was easier when one was young. There was always activity at the market, gossip, scandals, friends needing help." He doesn't mention midnight liaisons that occasionally left him fatigued during the day: an extra hour for siesta was a welcome thing. He still indulges, but only very occasionally. "The properties also needed more managing then, before Vairum organized them all. Life starts to run itself after a while."

"You should rest up while I'm gone. Vairum may not want to come here so much when he has a child, and the first year, things may fall into some disarray. You will be useful then."

"Yes, it could happen." He smiles at her, feeling nervous. Is he only fearful of how Vairum might treat her there, so far away from her routines and the village she knows? No, there's something else: "Amma, when you go, do a ritual over Vani against the evil eye."

Sivakami stops slicing okra and looks at him.

"I am afraid," he tells her, and it's true. He is chilled to the bone at the prospect of what might happen if this pregnancy doesn't succeed.

"You are right," she says, allowing herself to feel the fear she had suppressed with her own happiness. "I will do it, yes."

It's 7 a.m. when Vairum comes to fetch her in his new car, a red Buick sedan. She has been ready and waiting for a couple of hours, sitting in the door to the pantry while Muchami keeps her company from the courtyard. Vairum stops at the house only long enough for a drink of water. He has to draw it at the well because the big clay water pot in the pantry is drained and turned upside down.

"Ready, Amma?"

The house already has an empty feel, the shutters closed, the children gone. Sivakami begins locking all the doors in the house, from back to front, and Muchami goes through the garden to stand on the street beside the car to await his final instructions. Alone, Sivakami does a final oblation for the Ramar, thinking of the two other times she has performed a farewell for these G.o.ds: before going to her brothers' house and before going to Munnoor when Thangam died. She prays, innocent and hearty, that all should go well in Madras, stifling a moth-wing flutter of worry. Muchami was quite right to remind her to do a ritual against dhrishti.

She locks the front door behind her, inserts the key carefully into her travel bundle, and turns, feeling self-conscious, to the car, which has attracted a crowd. Vairum takes the bag of snacks with a small, sardonic grin as the uniformed driver holds the door open. Sivakami mounts the running board and enters the cavern of the car's back seat. It is a rare sunny day in November, the height of the rainy season, and the air inside the car has congealed into a warm stillness. Vairum is lending his ear to a man in the crowd who seems to have a proposal. The neighbours and children press in a bit closer, their interest renewed by seeing Sivakami within the car. Gayatri and Minister are here, too, waving cheerily, but Sivakami, feeling uncomfortably like a bride in this red chariot, can't smile back. She's a little irritated at being made the subject of a spectacle. It is inappropriate, but she couldn't expect Vairum to sympathize with that. Finally, Vairum enters the car. He settles himself on the grey upholstered seat while the driver closes the door and runs around the front to start the car.

It takes them some twelve hours to reach Madras, during which time Sivakami takes no food or water-no food because she eats nothing she hasn't cooked herself, nor water because she will only drink that reserved for Brahmins. Vairum and his driver eat at a grand restaurant in Pondicherry, where Vairum has a meeting. She waits for them in the car, watching the gawkers cl.u.s.ter, again, into a crowd. The gleaming, showy vehicle would have drawn an audience anyhow, but the sight of an orthodox Brahmin widow tucked inside inspires comments. Sivakami unwinds her prayer beads from her wrist and says mantras until Vairum returns.

He is silent for most of the journey. For a brief time, following the meeting, he looks over some papers, and he takes a short nap. Otherwise, he stares out his window and she out hers. She imagines the quiet between them is companionable, that they are both lost in the same rosy visions of the months and years to come-but he doesn't say and she doesn't really know what he is thinking.

It is after eight o'clock when they reach Madras. The city welters up around them, almost before Sivakami realizes it has. The houses on Vairum's street look, to Sivakami, grand enough to be government offices. In the car port, the driver opens her door, and she follows Vairum's striding form up the stairs, yearning to be invisible as she feels his employees' discreetly curious eyes. Upstairs, she creeps along the narrow balcony, keeping her gaze on the floor. In the outdoor reception area, Vani falls at her feet and ushers her through the majestic carved wooden doors into the sitting room. The black and white tiles are cool, like taut silk. Sivakami's callused feet make slapping sounds that ring in the airy room's besieged hush-the quiet of a house sheltered from traffic noise by tall trees and a serious cla.s.s differential. The sound of her feet against the brick of the Cholapatti floor was immediately dulled by the roughness of the floor, and the sounds of the village, always entering without leave.

She is so happy to see Vani, especially with the glow of expectancy lighting her rounded features. She appears cheerful and girlish as she shows Sivakami around, a terrific contrast with her appearance in recent years. She is about six months along and is significantly heavier, an effect enhanced by her nine-yard sari. But one would not guess Vani was pregnant from her figure, Sivakami thinks with some satisfaction: all the better to protect her from the evil eye.

Vani leads her to her room. She is not sure she likes this: a room of her own. It has one set of narrow double doors leading onto the rear courtyard, and another leading onto the sitting room. It seems inappropriate to her, excessive, for a lonely widow to take up an entire room, but she puts her Ramayana and extra sari in a wall-niche cupboard, along with her beading, and follows Vani out into the courtyard, in the centre of which is a well and a depression for washing dishes. This feels relatively familiar. The toilet and bath stalls are in the far corner. No more four-in-the-morning-blue-air dips in the Kaveri, she realizes. Will she really feel clean without sand encrusting her feet? From the courtyard, Vani shows her into the kitchen, where Vairum has deposited the satchel of snacks. It has a second set of doors onto a dining room, and a third, onto a rear puja room.

Sivakami takes water-the first she has drunk all day-pouring it from the bra.s.s jug down her throat without touching the jar to her lips, and then bathes and performs oblations for the G.o.ds in Vairum's puja room. Taking up a fistful of salt, she beckons Vani, making sure Vairum doesn't see, and circles her three times each way with the fist, saying the familiar curses under her breath. "May your eyes burst open if anything happens to this child." She looks around, unsure of where to throw evil-eye-soaked salt in a house without a ca.n.a.l out back. Vani points to the bathroom.

She turns next to familiarizing herself with the kitchen so she can cook herself a meal. So this is what it feels like to be so near the sea she has never seen, she thinks: the air itself clings like damp cloth. She finds herself waving her hand in front of her face as though she has walked through a cobweb; she finds the cupboard contents limp and sticky. She greets the servant couple from Cholapatti. The man has been given other ch.o.r.es, since Sivakami will do most of the cooking while she is here, but the woman remains to help with washing, peeling and chopping, and Sivakami shyly asks her how to use the stove.

Vairum has never told Sivakami anything about his work. Sometimes she has asked Muchami questions, and he has explained what he understood, based on gossip and on his observations as he accompanied Vairum in the field. She understands Vairum has a reputation for fairness and has earned a great deal of respect from both their tenants and his factory workers in the Kulithalai Taluk. She knows he had dealings with non-Brahmins but doesn't believe he will bring them into his house. Janaki and Kamalam had sworn to her, on returning from their Madras visit, that they ate no cooked food in non-Brahmin houses. It didn't occur to Sivakami to ask whether non-Brahmins ate food in Vairum's house. What is the purpose of soiling himself thus? He eats in restaurants-can't he just meet them there?

The first time it happens, she is convulsed with disgust: she she has cooked this food and Vairum and Vani are sitting has cooked this food and Vairum and Vani are sitting together together with three of those people, in plain view of those people, polluted by their gaze. She never shows herself in front of guests, Brahmin or non-Brahmin; the cook serves. But she glimpsed them as they entered-dark-skinned, evidently wealthy-and could hear them, using inflections and terms foreign to Brahmins, and imagined them eating the food she had prepared. She crouches in the door between the kitchen and puja room, feeling ill. The crowning insult is when they cut through the kitchen to the courtyard to wash their hands-they enter the kitchen! On their way back to the sitting room, they stop to compliment her lavishly on the food, mortifying her with their lack of manners. with three of those people, in plain view of those people, polluted by their gaze. She never shows herself in front of guests, Brahmin or non-Brahmin; the cook serves. But she glimpsed them as they entered-dark-skinned, evidently wealthy-and could hear them, using inflections and terms foreign to Brahmins, and imagined them eating the food she had prepared. She crouches in the door between the kitchen and puja room, feeling ill. The crowning insult is when they cut through the kitchen to the courtyard to wash their hands-they enter the kitchen! On their way back to the sitting room, they stop to compliment her lavishly on the food, mortifying her with their lack of manners.

That night, she performs purification ceremonies, waving camphor and muttering prayers, to make the kitchen usable again. The next day, unable to help herself, she tries to talk to Vairum about the breach.

"Kanna, I have heard that non-Brahmins are very fond of our food," she opens, timidly. "But shouldn't you consider Vani's feelings?"

Vairum snorts, looking amused. "What are you saying, Amma?"

"Vani is a good wife-she can't tell you this herself, and would never disobey you," she presses gently. "But you shouldn't make her eat with those... with non-Brahmins, kanna."

"Vani no more believes in such artificial distinctions than I do, Amma," he says sharply. "We keep Brahmin cooks only because they prepare food in the style we are accustomed to and like-not because we subscribe to your outmoded provincial prejudices. Got that?"

Sivakami is defenceless. Hanumarathnam never spoke rudely like this to anyone. Vairum is more polite to his peons than to his mother. How has she lost her son to a world turned upside-down? Was it for this that she educated him? Perhaps she should have kept him in the paadasaalai, she resorts to thinking, briefly indignant. At least he would have valued his Brahminhood then, even if his caste status were the only thing he had to be proud of.

In December, Sita arrives for her delivery, bringing her elder daughter and twin sons. Kamalam and Janaki also come, Kamalam to help Sita, and Janaki for company. Everyone but the expectant mother is accommodated in the guest quarters below. Sivakami's room becomes a birthing chamber and Sivakami relocates to the kitchen floor, where she feels significantly more at ease than she did taking up a room all on her own. Vani's nieces hold a bangle ceremony for her, and now the merry tinkle of gla.s.s mingles with her music when she plays, along with the sisters' chatter and the clamour of their children.

"It's like being back in the village!" Sivakami overhears Vairum telling Sita's husband, at the eleventh-day ceremony. "In the best sense, of course. Nothing like the sound of children's voices to gladden the heart, no?"

Sivakami sees Janaki's expression: all of the Cholapatti clan present for the ceremony are painfully aware that he has not always felt like this about the sound of children.

Visalam's in-laws come for the ceremony also, with a proposal for Vairum: the year of mourning for Visalam has ended and Kamalam is now eligible for marriage. She is already part of the household, they say; there's no sense in breaking the family bond. The children need a mother and she has proven already that she can be that to them.

Kamalam acts surprised and embarra.s.sed, but it is clear to all of them how comfortable she has felt at her future in-laws' house. Vairum happily accepts.

That afternoon, Vani plays a short concert for the guests. Sivakami disapproves and again makes the mistake, as Vani settles herself, of telling Vairum, "I am surprised you are not concerned about exposing her to the evil eye. She is almost eight months pregnant!"

"Oh, is she?" Vairum arches an eyebrow with consummate sarcasm. "I never would have known! Thank you for telling me, Amma! Oh, my, my wife is nearly eight months pregnant!"

Sivakami withdraws, humiliated, to the kitchen, where Janaki is stirring tapioca pudding on the stove for Sita's children.

"Is she well?" Janaki asks, a faint prying note in her voice. "One would hardly believe Vani Mami is pregnant."

It's true: Vani is nearing her due date and no larger than she was when Sivakami arrived in Madras.

"She is ready to be a mother!" Sivakami answers, sounding stiff. "Sometimes, when Sita's baby girl cries, Vani's b.r.e.a.s.t.s begin dripping so, so! The front of her sari gets soaked!"

"Oh, listen!" Janaki says. "She's playing 'Jaggadhodharana'! It brings me straight back to Cholapatti, Amma, that sound. Next summer, we'll all gather there, all the cousins, and Vani Mami will bring her child, and we can all look after it while she plays."

Sita's children swarm into the kitchen, whining for tapioca, and Janaki leads them out into the dining room.

DECEMBER BLEEDS INTO JANUARY, January creeps away and February swells into fullness, but Vani does not go into labour. She exhibits all the torpor and discomfort of advanced pregnancy, as though her burden is too great to bear and too precious to pa.s.s on, but she looks no bigger.

Sivakami is a patient woman, but she's not accustomed to waiting so long for this particular gratification. Gayatri, who had planned to come for the baby's naming ceremony, finally comes anyway, nearly two months after Vani's supposed due date.

"What on earth is going on?" she whispers loudly, as Sivakami serves her coffee in the kitchen. Vani is playing her veena in the sitting room, providing them with a cover of sound. "She's not pregnant, is she?"

"Of course she is." Sivakami combines the decoction with milk and sugar, pouring it from tumbler to bowl to mix it. "They must have miscalculated, miscounted."

"How long has it been since she last had her period?"

"I can't ask that," Sivakami responds reasonably, setting the coffee down in front of Gayatri and fetching biscuits.

"Have they seen a doctor?"

"I should hope not," Sivakami ejects, tartly indignant.

After a pause, Gayatri says, "I'm going to ask."

When Vani, after playing, comes into the kitchen for a drink of water, Gayatri beckons her.

"Come, dear." She pats the place beside her, and Vani plumps herself down awkwardly. "You look exhausted. I know all too well what it is like to be in this stage-every day seems like an eternity. Tell me, though: when did you last have your period?"

Vani frowns and looks away.

"Come now. You don't want this to go too long. It's not healthy for the baby, nor for you. You know there are remedies to help the baby along. Shall I find out about some for you?"

"No doctors," Vani says loudly, and Gayatri startles.

"Has Vairum taken you to any doctors?" Gayatri inquires.

"No," Vani says emphatically, and Sivakami thinks she can imagine the scenes between them.

"I have in mind traditional remedies," Gayatri says soothingly, and Vani looks more interested and less wary.

"But you don't want to take them too early-it's important to know that your baby is fully matured," Gayatri explains. "When did you have your last period?"

Vani purses her lips. Gayatri sighs.

After some long minutes, Vani replies. "April."

"April..." Gayatri counts off on her fingers. "So you might have been due as late as February. Let's give it another week and I'll see if my daughter-in-law knows anyone who can compound what you need."

Through March, the weather grows hot, and the atmosphere in the house feels oppressive. Gayatri secures and brings several herbal composites, which Sivakami prepares, boiling five roots in water for ten minutes, mixing the resulting decoction into milk and giving it to Vani to drink on an empty stomach. Vani follows the regime for three days, until Vairum learns of it and throws the herbalist's packets out the window of the kitchen.

"How dare you endanger our child with this witchcraft?" he asks. "I brought you here at Vani's insistence, but if I catch you again doing anything to jeopardize this pregnancy..." He leaves the threat unspoken.

Sivakami hasn't slept much since her arrival in Madras, and she lies awake for a week of nights after the confrontation, desiccated by sorrow. How could he think she would do anything to endanger the grandchild she wants, as she would readily admit, more than any of the others? A son of her son, a son of her son...

April bloats, May bursts-and still no child. Sivakami was to have returned to Cholapatti by now-she has been putting off her grandchildren, who all expected to convene in their natal home for the school holidays. It has become a tradition for those with school-age children to return, for the cousins to sleep together in the hall, play together near the ca.n.a.l, visit Gayatri's grandchildren in gangs and meet other children of their age on the Brahmin quarter. And now there are the three youngest ones in Thiruchi, whom she is missing.

She cautiously broaches the subject with Vairum, who has become increasingly preoccupied and busy of late.

"I don't see how you can go," he replies, without looking up from the paper he is reading on the divan, "but they are welcome to come here."

Janaki and Kamalam decide against coming, not wanting to crowd, and having visited so recently, but Saradha brings her family, as well as Radhai, Krishnan and Raghavan, who are thrilled to have the chance to see the city. Vairum makes a car available to them, though Saradha spends most of her time with Sivakami. Janaki had come to see her eldest sister the week prior and has sent a large packet of holy ash, along with a letter.

My husband had to go and consult a seer. Two of our tenants' plows were stolen, and they asked him to investigate. So he went to this man we heard of who has a very high reputation. The man told my husband: you will find your missing items in two separate places, one high, one low, but equidistant from the river. Seek and you will find. And it was true! But I also had him ask what is wrong with Vani Mami. The man said exactly this: "Your relative has a baby within her whose soul's growth is being stunted by the evil eye. Take this holy ash, and tell her to rub it on her belly daily as an antidote. Within a year, the baby will grow."

Sivakami thinks that surely Vairum cannot see holy ash as in any way harmful to the child-he is not superst.i.tious but he is religious. But when, two months later, Janaki writes to her to say that the seer was arrested for leading a burglary ring-his henchmen would steal agricultural implements and he would collect money from the owners for describing how to find them-Sivakami discreetly tells Vani to discontinue this treatment also.

When August blooms like an foul-smelling flower, Vani is still acting elephantine with expectancy, though she has gained no more weight. If anything, she may have lost some, and has begun once more to look dull and drawn, as she did in the long, empty years before her pregnancy. Nearly all the gla.s.s bangles she received have broken, a bad omen, but who ever wears them this long? The lonely chime of those few remaining sounds like the dregs of misplaced hope. Vairum's overinflated good humour has fizzled; he is short with his staff and talks to Sivakami as though she is a nuisance.

Gayatri, whose Madras son has had a child, visits, and Sivakami broaches the topic with her, saying Vairum has twice brought doctors to the house, but that Vani refuses to be seen by them.