And it took very little for Insef to convince Bihari of the importance of these things. She was a lively sweet girl with a good eye in the forest, a good memory for plants, and always a cheerful smile and a kind word for people. She was if anything too cheery and attractive, because in the year Kokila was to be married to Gopal, Shardul, his older brother, the eldest son of Shastri, soon to become Kokila's brother in law – one of those in her husband's family who would have the right to tell her what to do he started looking at Bihari in an interested way, and after that, no matter what she did, he watched her. It couldn't lead to any good, as Bihari was perhaps untouchable and therefore unmarriageable, and Insef did what she could to seclude her. But the festivals brought the single men and women together, and the daily life of the village afforded various glimpses and encounters as well. And Bihari was interested, anyway, even though she knew she was unmarriageable. She liked the idea of being normal, no matter how vehemently the dai warned her against it.

The day came when Kokila was married to Gopal and moved to Dharwan. Her new mother in law turned out to be withdrawn and irritable, and Gopal himself was no prize. An anxious man with little to say, dominated by his parents, never reconciled with his father, he at first tried to lord it over Kokila the way they did over him, but without much conviction, particularly after she had snapped at him a few times. He was used to that, and quickly enough she had the upper hand. She didn't much like him, and looked forward to dropping by to see Bihari and the dai in the forest. Really only the second son, Prithvi, seemed to her at all admirable in the headman's family, and he left early every day and had as little to do with his family as he could, keeping quiet with a distant air.

There was a lot of traffic between the two villages, more than Kokila had ever noticed before it became so important to her, and she made do – secretly taking a preparation that the dai had made for her, to keep from having a baby. She was fourteen years old but she wanted to wait.

Before long things went bad. The dai got so crippled by her swollen joints that Bihari had to take over her work, and she was much more frequently seen in Dharwar. Meanwhile Shastri and Shardul were conspiring to make money by betraying their village, changing the tax assessment with the agent of the zamindar, shifting it to the zamindar's great advantage, with Shastri skimming off some for himself. Basically they were colluding to change Dharwar over to the Muslim form of farm tax rather than the Hindu law. The Hindu law, which was a religious injunction and sacred, allowed a tax of no more than one sixth of all produce, while the Muslim claim was to everything, with whatever the farmers kept being a matter of the pleasure of the zamindar. In practice this often meant little difference, but Muslim allowances varied for crops and circumstance, and this is where Shastri and Shardul were helping the zamindar, by calculating what more could be taken without starving the villagers. Kokila lay there at night with Gopal, and through the open doorway as he slept she heard Shastri and Shardul going over the possibilities.

'Wheat and barley, two fifths when naturally watered, three tenths when watered by wheels.'

'That sounds good. Then dates, vines, green crops and gardens, onethird.'

'But summer crops one fourth.'

Eventually, to aid in this work, the zamindar gave Shardul the post of qanungo, assessor for the village; and he was already an awful man. And he still had an eye for Bihari. The night of the car festival he took her in the forest. From her account afterwards it was clear to Kokila that Bihari hadn't completely minded it, she relished telling the details, 'I was on my back in the mud, it was raining on my face and he was licking the rain off it, saying I love you I love you.'

'But he won't marry you,' Kokila pointed out, worried. 'And his brothers won't like it if they hear about this.'

'They won't hear. And it was so passionate, Kokila, you have no idea.' She knew Kokila was not impressed by Gopal.

'Yes yes. But it could lead to trouble. Is a few minutes' passion worth that?'

'It is, it is. Believe me.'

For a while she was happy, and sang all the old love songs, especially one they used to sing together, an old one: 'I like sleeping with somebody different, Often. It's nicest when my husband is in a far country, Far away. And there's rain in the streets at night and wind And nobody.'

But Bihari got pregnant, despite Insef's preparations. She tried to keep to herself, but with the dai crippled there were births that she had to attend, and so she went and her condition was noted, and people put together what they had seen or heard, and said that Shardul had got her with child. Then Prithvi's wife was giving birth and Bihari went to help, and the baby, a boy, died a few minutes after it was born, and outside their house Shastri struck Bihari in the face, calling her a witch and a whore.

All this Kokila heard about when she visited Prithvi's house, from Prithvi's wife, who said the birth had gone faster than anyone expected, and that she doubted Bihari had done anything bad. Kokila hurried off to the dai's hut, and found the gnarled old woman puffing with effort between Bihari's legs, trying to get the baby out. 'She's miscarrying,' she told Kokila. So Kokila took over and did what the dai told her to, forgetting her own family until night fell, when she remembered and exclaimed, 'I have to go!' and Bihari whispered, 'Go. It will be all right.'

Kokila rushed home through the forest to Dharwar, where her mother in law slapped her, but perhaps just to pre empt Gopal, who punched her hard in the arm and forbade her to return to the forest or Sivapur ever again, a ludicrous command given the realities of their life, and she almost said 'How will I fetch your water then?' but bit her lip and rubbed her arm, looking daggers at them, until she judged they were as frightened as they could get without beating her, after which she glared like Kali at the floor instead, and cleaned up after their impromptu dinner, which had been hobbled by her absence. They could not even cat without her. This fury was the thing she would remember for ever.

Before dawn next morning she slipped out with the water jugs and hurried through the wet grey forest, leaves scattered at every level from the ground to the high canopy overhead, and arrived at the dai's hut frightened and breathing hard.

Bihari was dead. The baby was dead, Bihari was dead, even the old woman lay stretched on her pallet, gasping with the pain of her exertions, looking as if she too might expire and leave this world at any minute. 'They went an hour ago,' she said. 'The baby should have lived, I don't know what happened. Bihari bled too much. I tried to stop it but I couldn't reach.'

'Teach me a poison.'

'What?'

'Teach me a good poison to use. I know you know them. Teach me the strongest one you know, right now.'

The old woman turned her head to the wall, weeping. Kokila pulled her around roughly and shouted, 'Teach me!'

The old woman looked over at the two bodies under a spread sari, but there was no one else there to be alarmed. Kokila began to raise a hand to threaten her, then stopped herself. 'Please,' she begged. 'I have to know.'

'It's too dangerous.'

'Not as dangerous as sticking a knife in Shastri.'

'No.'

'I'll stab him if you don't tell me, and they'll burn me on a bonfire.'

'They'll do that if you poison him.'

'No one will know.'

'They'll think I did it.'

'Everyone knows you can't move.'

'That won't matter. Or they'll think you did it.'

'I'll do it cleverly, believe me. I'll be at my parents'.'

'It won't matter. They'll blame us anyway. And Shardul is as bad as Shastri, or worse.'