Chinnarathnam smiles. "So it is not"-he drops to a whisper-"leprosy ? This is what the child's mother fears."

"No, no, no. d.a.m.ned village superst.i.tion." The LMP leans in to Chinnarathnam, who leans away from his overfamiliarity and smell of sweat. "My mother thinks the same way. We must impress upon these people that it is quite different."

Chinnarathnam sees the doctor to the door and instructs Minister to walk him to the end of the Brahmin quarter and bid him farewell.

He then comes back to the rear of the main hall and asks, "Sivakami? What do you think?"

Muchami is waiting in the garden to relay her response to Chinnarathnam. Sivakami is aware of the unusual importance of re-enlisting the servant in her son's care-she has always felt that when Muchami looks after Vairum, he is overcoming some native distaste. Now she has to persuade him that Vairum's condition won't affect him-before trying to persuade the entire Brahmin quarter of the same.

"I am quite satisfied," she says, with forced authority.

Muchami conveys this to Chinnarathnam with a pa.s.sable imitation of her quavery confidence.

"What do you think?"

"Yes, it confirms what I thought," Chinnarathnam says, polite but genuinely relieved. "There is no way that a child being raised in such hygienic and sheltered surroundings could have contracted... the l-word."

Muchami relates this to Sivakami verbatim, again bringing his skills in mimicry to bear.

"But now you must do something for the boy's condition."

"Mm, yes," Sivakami hurries to agree. "I want to pledge a golden armour for the Rathnagirishwarar Lingam. Vairum can carry it up the hill to give."

"A very good idea for skin maladies. Shall I order that for you? There is one Kulithalai goldsmith I trust to do a very good job."

Sivakami consents.

"May I also suggest a puja to ward off possible ill effects of the planets?" Chinnarathnam continues. "One relative of mine, he had exactly the same condition, and an astrologer advised the family that it was a time of bad planetary alignments for the man. I can't remember which... Saturn? Venus? Something not good. I can call an astrologer for you, also. There is one man here your late husband respected."

Sivakami thinks this a very good idea.

When Chinnarathnam goes, Vairum, who, despite his theatrical displays of uninterest, has been paying close attention to these exchanges, runs straight to Muchami, who shrinks from him.

"What's wrong with me?" the little boy demands.

"Nothing, sir." Muchami shakes his head insistently. "Don't you worry yourself about this. Come on, I have time for a round of dayakkattam. Come chalk the board on the courtyard. Come."

This is a house without mirrors, and so until Vairum leaves it to go out into the world, he will have to take Muchami at his word.

THE OLD MEN AND WOMEN who had been in Hanumarathnam's employ have, after years of pretending they were too old to work, finally grown into their pretense. Sivakami asks Muchami if his wife would like a job.

He doesn't see why she wouldn't. So Mari begins, only an hour or two daily at first, then staying to serve Muchami his mid-morning meal, and then staying to help with the late-afternoon cleaning. She is appropriately shy and deferential with her husband and his employer, but her strength of personality is evident. Like Gayatri, Mari is a confident young woman who did not know Hanumarathnam and who therefore comes unaccompanied by residual sadness. Unlike Gayatri, however, Mari is very strict in religious observance. One of the reasons she wants to spend time with Sivakami is to learn the practices of the caste she considers closest to G.o.d.

Mari appears determined to make herself a Brahmin woman in every way she can-which is to say, every way except birth, marriage and where she makes her home. Since everyone in Cholapatti considers Sivakami a paragon of Brahmin widowhood, Mari replicates all her habits, which are, apart from her shaven head and white sari, simply orthodox practices that any person with deep concern for his or her spiritual well-being might adopt. Most often, Brahmin men and women take on these renunciations late in life, when their children are gone and their material obligations with them. But Mari is impatient to improve her spiritual welfare and starts immediately. She maintains madi from sun-up to sundown. She takes food prepared only by her own hand, or Sivakami's. She refuses foods such as pazhiah sadam, dosai pazhiah sadam, dosai and and idli, idli, which involve fermentation; at home, she will eat only food cooked the same day, and if it's not available, she eats raw fruit. It's a sacrifice but she relishes it. Visibly. which involve fermentation; at home, she will eat only food cooked the same day, and if it's not available, she eats raw fruit. It's a sacrifice but she relishes it. Visibly.

Almost all the Brahmins on Sivakami's street who learn of Mari's imitations are flattered; she basks in their approval. She knows many in her own community are contemptuous; she takes their contempt as proof of her success. But Gayatri, who comes over daily to keep Sivakami up to the minute on gossip and opinions, new purchases and the news of the day, is openly amused by Mari's pretensions. She unapologetically drinks her daily cup of coffee at Sivakami's, teasing Mari about it, pressing her to imbibe. Worse, Gayatri never once says she wishes she could be so strict with herself. It is of Gayatri alone that Mari might be jealous-not because she wants to be like Gayatri, but because Gayatri doesn't want to be like her.

And now Vairum, in Sivakami's opinion, is refusing to become what he already is, what he was meant to be. After all her efforts in bringing him back here, he will not attend school.

Thangam, despite being the elder, spends all her days on the veranda. She has small ch.o.r.es to do, a few minutes of helping her mother with food preparation, a few minutes of embroidery, which she does without resistance or engagement. Always the children await her outside, from first light to dusk. She is not likely to attend school, but Sivakami registers her, hoping this might goad Vairum into it too. When Sivakami reminds him of the ceremony of rebirth he so proudly undertook in Samanthibakkam, saying that his education commenced with that moment, he replies, "So take me back there so I can start school. I told you, that's what I'm waiting for."

She jabs her hand in the general direction of her brothers' house. "If you go back to Samanthibakkam, the school you will go to will make of you nothing more than a Brahmin."

"I am a Brahmin," says her son.

"Yes," she cries, "you are already a Brahmin, and I think you can become something more, if you go to a proper school."

"Well, I don't want to and I won't!" He stomps upstairs, to the attic room he has begun to adopt as his refuge.

Gayatri, who arrived early in this conversation, signals to Sivakami that she will go after him. She mounts the stairs and persuades him to come down for their twice-weekly palanguzhi match, and, as usual, he does multiplication tables under his breath between turns at the cowries. Today, she casually inquires, "Do you have any idea how much more maths you will learn, how much more math there is to learn, by going to school? You can't imagine." For her trouble, she receives a scowl.

Muchami also makes his contributions to the campaign. Sivakami overhears him at the close of a game of courtyard tic-tac-toe, saying, "Look, I beat you. Me, your family servant. Go to school, little boy, or that is going to happen more and more."

It is Minister, Gayatri's husband, who makes the obvious suggestion. "Bribe the boy!" he proposes in his marvellously English-accented Tamil. Only a would-be politician would think of this, but Gayatri agrees it is a simple and brilliant solution.

She immediately conveys the suggestion to Sivakami in whispers by the well, just in case Vairum should find their conversation interesting. But with what should they bribe him?

They offer: 1. New clothes New clothes. Wouldn't he like a bright shiny shirt and dhoti to wear to school? But Vairum, though he sits out of view of the street, can see the street quite well. He can see that every child wears a bright shiny shirt and dhoti to school. He rejects the deal.2. Money Money. Wouldn't he like a few more coins to jingle against the one at his waist, maybe to buy candy on his way to and from school? But Vairum already knows that money has no value in this place. The only way he will accept cash is if he's going back to Samanthibakkam, where he has friends on whom to spend it. No deal.3. Toys Toys. Wouldn't he like a new palanguzhi set or a top he can show off on the street? But Vairum likes palanguzhi with Gayatri just fine on the set they have-and he's not showing anything off on the street. Forget it.

Gayatri had witnessed Vairum's first encounters with the village children as they ran past her own veranda and can imagine that his condition would now make him even more self-conscious. Her father-in-law has gone to considerable trouble to smooth Vairum's path into the local school, meeting with the headmaster and teachers. He succeeded in overcoming their objections to the child's presence, though he could not persuade them against prejudices. Gayatri thinks she understands Vairum's reactions to the bribes but cannot come up with anything better. During their afternoon rest, she asks her husband if he has any other ideas.

"No, no, you must offer him something special, something different ... something more... English," Minister muses. "Shoes. Offer him a shiny pair of brown leather shoes, foreign-made. I will take him to Trichy"-it's one of Minister's idiosyncrasies that he thinks the English name for the city of Thiruchinapalli, "Trichinopoly," more attractive than the Tamil-"and buy them for him. Get him off on the right foot, so to speak." He chortles at this last expression. It's rendered in English, so Gayatri doesn't understand it, but she understood what he had said before and so chortles along and pecks him impulsively on the cheek, which leads, one thing to another, on to something else. It's early evening by the time she makes the trip to Sivakami's house.

Wholly convinced this suggestion will work, Gayatri beckons Sivakami in from the kitchen with a call-"Hoi, Sivakamikka!"-and squats before the glum little boy whose education is their collective mission. Vairum regards her with wary curiosity.

"Okay, mister, what about this? My husband has offered to take you into Thiruchi with him tomorrow and, if you are the good little boy he thinks you are, the little boy who is going to start school and be brilliant and become rich, he wants to buy you a pair of English shoes. No one can expect to be successful and work in an office without shoes. And think about it, you will be the only child from Cholapatti who walks to school in glossy, brown, leather..." Her descriptive powers fail her for a second, and Sivakami breaks into the pause indignantly.

"Hooves! They will be like bullock hooves. What Brahmin wears the skins of killed animals? No, I'm sorry. Vairum will not be clip-clopping to and from the school smelling like a tannery worker no casted person would go near."

Vairum pays a good deal more attention upon hearing his mother's objections. The idea of shoes does appeal to him. He's seen them on tax collectors and on Minister. If his mother had been enthusiastic about the idea, he might have had to reject it. Now, seeing her willingness to relinquish his education over caste objections, he stamps his foot and insists, "Yes, yes, I want English shoes to wear to school. I must have English shoes to go to school."

Sivakami gapes at him in astonishment. "But you told me you only wanted to go to the school that would make you into a Brahmin. Now you will only go to school if you do something Brahmins do not do?"

"Oh, pish," Gayatri interrupts with one of her husband's favourite e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns. "In cities, offices are full of Brahmins, all of them wearing both sacred thread and leather shoes. Times are different. If you want your son to go to a paadasaalai, he can go barefoot. If he is going to step into the new world, he has to do it shod."

Vairum is agreeing vigorously, and Sivakami concedes defeat with the flicker of a feeling that she has brought this upon herself-and Vairum. If she had stayed in Samanthibakkam and sent him to a paadasaalai, he wouldn't be getting shoes, that's for sure. What kind of Brahmin will he become, walking the path along which she has aimed him? Maybe he needs the shoes.

No more than two days later, Vairum steps proudly up the Brahmin quarter and to his front door. Sivakami hears him coming. It can't be, not in the soft dust of the road, but she is sure she hears the soft thuds of Minister's tread, and the smaller clip-clop of her own son's new feet. Born into caste to begin school and now uncasted for the same reason.

She meets him at the door and sees his expression of cautious pride when confronted with all the veranda-gathered children become defiance when he sees her. She silently indicates where he is to leave his shoes, in the vestibule between the doors. He shucks them with his toes and lines them up carefully in a corner.

The next day, as per the bargain, Muchami drives Vairum, kudumi slicked and shoes buffed, in the bullock cart, to the Tamil medium school at Kulithalai, some twenty minutes away. He is wearing a new dhoti and shirt, each with a bit of vermilion k.u.mk.u.mum rubbed into an unseen corner, to soil it appropriately.

She watches them from the door, listens to the rustle, snap and clip-clop of her little boy's outfitting, watches him clinging tightly, more tightly than he would ever admit, to Muchami's hand as he mounts the bullock cart. He rides in front with Muchami since the two of them are alone. She turns away only after they turn the corner. Vairum never glances back.

In the schoolyard, though, holding Muchami's hand again, he walks more and more slowly as they pa.s.s the other children, some recognizable from the Brahmin quarter, some from the merchants' colony, some from Muchami's own quarter. There are more high-caste than low-caste kids, and more Brahmins than anyone else, and none wearing shoes. Muchami feels a little uncomfortable about the freakish child hanging from his hand: there is something slightly awkward about his gait; his clothes look boxy, his eyes too intense. The effect is heightened by the spreading patch of white on his face, as well as another sprinkling on his knee beneath his dhoti and on the hand clasping Muchami's. The servant would have felt this way even before Vairum's condition arose, and only convinced himself to touch the child in the course of convincing his own mother that he could not catch Vairum's malady. He gives a menacing glance toward the first giggle, and all the children along that flank fall silent. Vairum's hand is slippery against the servant's and the child squeezes harder to hold on.

MID-MORNING, Sivakami steps out to the front to call Thangam in. She sees one of their neighbours withdrawing a hand he seems to have placed on the child's head in an att.i.tude of blessing. He continues along the Brahmin quarter, not having seen Sivakami, and the blanket of children around Thangam reseals in the wake of his departure. Looking down the quarter after him, Sivakami sees Gayatri leave her own house and come toward Sivakami's, along with another neighbour on her way back from the temple. Not in a mood to speak, she withdraws slightly. This woman, also, stops to place a hand briefly on Thangam's bowed head. She, too, continues home. The children register no surprise. Gayatri arrives, and Sivakami speaks: "Thangam, it's time for your food." Sivakami backs away a little more to avoid their touch as they pa.s.s, and asks Gayatri, "Have you eaten?"

She knows that Gayatri has-it's a formality to ask-and so gets her a cup of coffee, seats Thangam and serves her first helpings before asking Gayatri, "Is everyone on the Brahmin quarter coming daily to bless my daughter?"

Gayatri tilts her head back and raises her eyebrows. "Everyone is receiving her blessing..."

"You too?" Sivakami asks.

"Of course. Every time. She's done wonders for the children, as you can see. There are no children yet in our house," she says smugly, five months pregnant and finally showing, "but all the parents are saying their children have become quiet and manageable, and everyone..."

Here Gayatri pauses.

"What?"

"Well, I don't know about your husband, except what people have said. Is it true, he had friends among the siddhas? My husband said they used to come and your husband would go off with them, that he had great healing powers, and that they, the siddhas, haven't come since he died."

"Yes, my husband could heal."

"Your daughter can too." Gayatri blurts and then shuts her lips quickly as though unsure of whether she should have said this.

Sivakami is more surprised than skeptical.

"People think," Gayatri tentatively explains, "she inherited his abilities."

"But they haven't been around, have they?" Sivakami asks warily.

"The siddhas-since we left?"

"Not since I got here," Gayatri shrugs.

"I don't want them to come." Sivakami shakes her head, but she is recalling the words of the siddha that day when he saw her baby daughter : Brahmin flesh becoming siddhic gold. It's impossible, preposterous anyway, that he would have given something to the child. But Hanumarathnam had gifts, to transform sickness into health, translate mystery into reality. It's not strange that his efforts and gifts are manifest in his daughter; it would be stranger if they were not. It remains to be seen whether the father's disciplines or lack of discipline will dominate in his son, whether Vairum will be the product more of experiments in transformation or of the blood and conditioning of caste.

Muchami escorts Vairum to and from school every day for a week or two and gradually identifies which children of his own caste community attend regularly. He visits the homes of these boys and instructs them to keep an eye out for Vairum. Any child who tries to hara.s.s him should be reminded that Muchami will hear about it. Muchami inspires awe across caste.

When Vairum realizes that these boys have begun to follow him, he makes some cautious attempts at friendship. He does some math equations, and they are very impressed, though they don't seem inspired to familiarity. He gives them every interesting item in his tif fin case and they accept, but they still pa.s.s the lunch recess at a slight distance. He invites them to the sweet stand to buy them some treats, but Muchami stops them before they get there.

The boys confess to Muchami that they are a little afraid of Vairum's speckles, as well as of the other Brahmin kids, who seem to want to pick on him, but he tells them they are doing a good job and keep it up.

As the weeks roll forward, Vairum trudges resignedly to and from the schoolhouse and ceases to talk of Samanthibakkam. Sivakami thinks he has forgotten the wandering-pondering fun of his gang and his pre-school years. She doesn't see the silver coin always in his pocket, polishing itself against his school clothes, and if she did, she would not know he set it aside to trade with those left-behind cousins. She would only think, What a good and thrifty boy not to have spent that coin What a good and thrifty boy not to have spent that coin.

Festival Days 1908.

SIVAKAMI RETURNS FROM HER BATH at the river and is horrified to learn that Thangam has, alone and unsupervised, drawn water at the well and taken her bath. At least she took her bath water cold; she's not yet been taught to light the bathroom stove. It is early September, the eve of Navaratri, nine nights of feasting to celebrate G.o.ddesses and girls. The first three nights are dedicated to the G.o.ddess Durga the perfector, the next three to Lakshmi, the bringer of wealth, and the last three to Saraswati, who governs education and music. It must be that Thangam is excited.

Sivakami is not sure how to take the little girl's enthusiasm: she has never seen Thangam show excitement about anything before, apart from her pa.s.sion for her little brother, the expression of which has been muted since he grew out of infancy.

This is the first of the major festivals they have celebrated at home since Hanumarathnam's death and their return. Sivakami is re-establishing their family in the Brahmin quarter as modest and conventional beyond reproach. Their golu golu will be simple, no more and no less than three shelves, displaying a good selection of dolls in conservative, indigenous attire. Thangam unpacked all the dolls the night previous, inspected them for breaks and tears and mended as required. Today, she will repaint faces. One or two dolls may get a change of costume, but the sari must still be wrapped in an orthodox manner, and jewellery and hairstyles remain consistent. Thangam takes the single liberty of grouping a few around her little flute-playing Krishna, to admire his musicianship and pectoral muscles. will be simple, no more and no less than three shelves, displaying a good selection of dolls in conservative, indigenous attire. Thangam unpacked all the dolls the night previous, inspected them for breaks and tears and mended as required. Today, she will repaint faces. One or two dolls may get a change of costume, but the sari must still be wrapped in an orthodox manner, and jewellery and hairstyles remain consistent. Thangam takes the single liberty of grouping a few around her little flute-playing Krishna, to admire his musicianship and pectoral muscles.

Fortunately, Gayatri, who has none of Sivakami's concerns, has invited Thangam to help her and her mother-in-law set up their golu, which will require much more time and creativity. This is Gayatri's first Navaratri in her husband's village, where she has no sisters, nor sisters-in-law, and so she has invited Thangam to come and help with this, the most pleasant of feminine ch.o.r.es, always more pleasant in a crowd. Gayatri does, at least, have an ad hoc ally in her mother-in-law, an avid and compet.i.tive collector who has decreed that their golu should be the grandest on the street. Her daughter-in-law is, for once, wholly complicit in her wishes. Sivakami is amazed as she watches Thangam gallop down the Brahmin quarter to Gayatri's house.

She arrives as Gayatri and her mother-in-law are unpacking their collection. They greet her as servants shuffle away the boxes. Thangam stands silent until she's impatiently beckoned.

Some of the dolls are exotic, such as a little boy figure in green felt short-pants held up by two straps. He has a mate in a green felt skirt. "Both are albino," the mother-in-law points out. They were a gift from a man who photographed her wedding for display abroad, from "Soovisterlund," a place the mother-in-law says, authoritatively, is "between Iroppia and Aappirikka." Gayatri exclaims that another doll, with reddish-brown skin, looks like pictures she has seen of north Indian indigenes: tall and severe, clothed in stiff skins, beads, feathers and face paint. The mother-in-law explains condescendingly that the doll is, in fact, from "Ikanahda," gifted to her by a British engineer.

None of the other dolls are as exotic, but they are exciting. Three are dressed like dancing girls, in cheap jewellery and cunningly wrapped costumes. One even has a torso that wobbles in its blouson and hinged legs that spread the pleats of her costume into a stiff fan. Another wears a sequined, Persianesque veil.

Thangam is most taken with four tiny, exquisite, carved figures, each all-of-a-piece: a woman bending over a grinder, a man putting his shoulder to a plow, another woman inspecting her loom, and a man cutting coconuts from the top of a tree. The mother-in-law's face softens with pleasure at Thangam's choice.

"These, child... the most precious. They are the only dolls I brought out from my father's house. They were carved by our old servant. He took me everywhere. On his hip-he never let my feet touch the ground. He's been dead now... thirty-five years? More."

She quickly becomes all business. "So, Gayatri, what? What are we doing?"

Gayatri shrugs.

There is one thing that Thangam has not yet examined, and she goes to it now: a three-storey dollhouse, sitting on a green-painted wooden plinth. It's taller than her waist and has a veranda spanning its front, while the back is painted in red bricks, with window frames filigreed in green and violet.

Gayatri comes over to where Thangam is conducting her inspection and explains, proud and a little possessive, "My father bought this for me in Thiruchi when I was nine, just after my first Pongal in my husband's house. Guess you'll have yours in a couple of months, right? I begged and begged for it, but he said no, and I cried so hard that night. I wasn't spoiled," she says as if warning Thangam. "My whole life, I never asked for anything but this. The next day, he came home with it." Two little bound-straw dolls huddle over clay pots and an even smaller pair nap on tiny mats. "My sisters said I must bring it with me when I came to live here. Aren't the dolls sweet?" She rearranges them around minuscule tin plates, but the realism is spoiled because they are too stiff to sit. "Let's try and make some more things for them."

(Is Thangam remembering that other wee house, long dismantled, where she served her father's soul his last meals? She says nothing about that, but brings her own tin play dishes to Gayatri the next day and insists on an extra place setting at each meal.) Gayatri's mother-in-law breaks in. "How many shelves for the golu? I say eleven."

Thangam gapes.

"Eleven, yes, and an extra platform to run the perimeter of the pool. Panju! Panjunathan!"

Their servant comes hurrying to remove the two-foot-square wooden cover that sits year-round like a trap door in the main hall, flush with the floor. It conceals the hollow whose sole purpose is to become a pond every year at this time, a fixture in homes of status. The servant clatters off the board and squats to examine the state of the square basin, much like a temple tank in miniature, its surface slippery and green from eleven months under cover. This will give the "lake" an authentic cast once the basin is filled with water and baby lotus plants, but Panjunathan's job is to find cracks, dry them and plug them with mortar. He picks diagnostically at fissures with a long, reddish fingernail.

They work on the golu until the wee hours of the morning. It is magnificent. At eleven shelves, it is taller than anyone who will come to see it. The top shelf is crowned with pictures of G.o.ds, heavily garlanded by Gayatri, who balances precariously on a bench dragged into the main hall for this purpose. The servant guards her, no doubt praying he will not have to touch her, since to do so is forbidden in several ways: first, a male servant can't touch a young mistress, and second, she is Brahmin and his touch would be polluting. Her pregnancy adds an extra frisson of fear and his jaw is clenched as he stands by.

Reams of new silk cascade down the shelves in bands of peac.o.c.k and aubergine, so much fabric, of such good quality, that its weight holds it in place without tacks. On each shelf, a scene plays out. Thangam and Gayatri will change the dolls around each morning of the festival, so that the small figures meet one another in a variety of social settings: a concert, a party, a school, a wedding, a Dravidian religious festival, a trial, a pilgrimage, a diplomatic incident (suggested by Minister), a bridge inauguration and an exorcism. Two bars, normally used for hanging saris on, extend from the sides of the ninth shelf, and three marionettes hang from each bar.

For nine nights running, Thangam and all the other village girls run house to house after dark, admiring the golu, singing a song and accepting a treat: sweet crunchy b.a.l.l.s of black sesame, teardrop bubbles of fried batter tossed with nuts, sugar crystals ground with toasted lentils and compressed into b.a.l.l.s. On the ninth night, the lady of each house makes an offering to a young girl, invited for this purpose. A beautiful virgin from a good family embodies the G.o.ddess, perfect in everything-no girl is feted who is deformed or sickly, blind or bad-smelling. Not surprisingly, Sivakami has received many requests for Thangam, though she has made her available only to houses without virgins of their own.

Thangam's enthusiasm has got Sivakami curious, and on the first night of the festival, when she's putting Thangam to bed, she asks her about it.

"I had no idea you loved Navaratri so much, kunju. kunju. You never showed such excitement, even last year in Samanthibakkam, when your cousins and aunts got up a display." You never showed such excitement, even last year in Samanthibakkam, when your cousins and aunts got up a display."

The girl is quiet a moment. "They had all the dolls."

"They didn't have that many dolls."

"No."

"Not like Gayatri."

"The big aunty already had so many, Amma-remember when we went, when I was small?"

This is Gayatri's mother-in-law. Sivakami knows she and Thangam would have paid a call there together before, before everything changed, but she has no recollection of it. Clearly, it made a much greater impression on Thangam than she had realized.

"And Gayatri Mami told me she has just as many, Amma, and she does and she specially asked me to help arrange them!" Thangam's eyes shine in the dark.