One of the men, who appeared to be their leader, frowned. “Say it again.”

He nodded when she said the strange word the second time. Taking a pouch made of newspaper out of his pocket, he tapped it: white powder, like crushed chalk, poured out. He took out a cigarette from another pocket, sliced it open, tapped out the tobacco, filled the paper with the white powder, and rolled it tight. He held the cigarette up in the air and gestured with his other hand to Soumya.

“Twelve rupees.”

“I’ve got only nine,” she said. “You’ll have to take nine.”

“Ten.”

She gave them the money; she took the cigarette. A horrible doubt seized her.

“If you’re robbing me, if you’re cheating me…Raju and I’ll come back with Daddy-and beat you all.” The three men crouched together. They began shaking, and then they were laughing together. Something was wrong with them. She grabbed Raju by the wrist and she and her brother ran.

Glimpses of the scene to come flashed through her mind. She would show Daddy what she had brought for him from so far away. “Sweetie,” he would say-the way he used to say it-and hold her in a frenzy of affection, and the two would go mad with love for each other.

Her left foot began to burn after a while, and she flexed her toes and stared at them. Raju insisted on being carried; but fair enough, she thought-the little fellow had done well today.

It began raining again. Raju cried. She had to threaten to leave him behind three times; once she actually left him and walked a whole block before he came running after her, telling her of a giant dragon that was chasing him.

They got onto a bus.

“Tickets,” the driver shouted, but she winked at him and said, “Big brother, let us on for free, please…”

His face softened, and he let them stay near the back.

It was pitch-black when they got back to Rose Lane. They saw the lamps lit up in all the mansions. The foreman was sitting under his gas lamp, talking to one of the workers. The house looked smaller: all the crossbeams had been sawn off.

“Did you go begging in this neighborhood?” the foreman shouted when he saw the two of them.

“No, we didn’t.”

“Don’t lie to me! You were gone all day-and doing what? Begging on Rose Lane!”

She raised her upper lip in contempt. “Why don’t you ask if we begged here before accusing us?”

The foreman glared at them, but kept quiet, defeated by the girl’s logic.

Raju ran ahead, screaming for his mother. They found her asleep, alone, in her rain-dampened sari. Raju ran up to her, butted his head into her side, and began rubbing against her body for warmth like a kitten; the sleeping woman groaned and turned over to the other side. One of her arms began swatting Raju away.

“Amma,” he said, shaking her. “Amma! I’m hungry! Soumya gave me nothing to eat all day! She made me walk and walk and take this bus and that, and no food! A white man gave her a hundred rupees but she never gave me anything to eat or drink.”

“Don’t lie!” Soumya hissed. “What about the biscuits?”

But he kept shaking her: “Amma! Soumya gave me nothing to eat or drink all day!”

The two children began wrestling each other. Then a hand lightly tapped Soumya’s shoulder.

“Sweetie.”

When he saw their father, Raju began to simper; he turned and ran to his mother. Soumya and her father walked to one side.

“Do you have it, sweetie? Do you have the thing?”

She drew a breath. “Here,” she said, and put the packet into his hands. He lifted it up to his nose, sniffed, and then put it under his shirt: she saw his hands reach through his sarong into his groin. He took his hand out. She knew it was coming now: his caress.

He caught her wrist; his fingers cut into her flesh.

“What about the hundred rupees that the white man gave you? I heard Raju.”

“No one gave me a hundred rupees, Daddy. I swear. Raju is lying, I swear.”

“Don’t lie. Where is the hundred rupees?”

He raised his arm. She began screaming.

When she came to lie down next to her mother, Raju was still complaining that he had not eaten all day long, and had been forced to walk from here to there and then from there to another place and then back to here. Then he saw the red marks on his sister’s face and neck, and went silent. She fell to the ground, and went to sleep.

KITTUR: BASIC FACTS

TOTAL POPULATION (1981 CENSUS): 193,432 residents

CASTE AND RELIGIOUS BREAKDOWN (as percentage of total population):

HINDUS:

UPPER CASTES:

Brahmins:

Kannada-speaking: 4 percent

Konkani-speaking: 3 percent

Tulu-speaking: less than 1 percent

Bunts: 16 percent

Other upper castes: 1 percent

BACKWARD CASTES:

Hoykas: 24 percent

Miscellaneous backward castes and tribals: 4 percent

DALITS (formerly known as untouchables): 9 percent

MINORITIES:

Muslims:

Sunni: 14 percent

Shia: 1 percent

Ahmadiyya, Bohra, Ismaili: less than 1 percent

Catholics: 14 percent

Protestants (Anglican, Pentecostal, Jehovah’s Witness, Mormon): 3 percent

Jains: 1 percent

Other religions (including Parsi, Jewish, Buddhist, Brahmo Samaj, and Bahá’í): less than 1 percent

89 residents declare themselves to be without religion or caste

DAY FIVE: VALENCIA (TO THE FIRST CROSSROADS)

Valencia, the Catholic neighborhood, begins with Father Stein’s Homeopathic Hospital, which is named after a German Jesuit missionary who began a hospice here. Valencia is the largest neighborhood of Kittur; most of its inhabitants are educated, employed, and owners of their homes. The handful of Hindus and Muslims who have bought land in Valencia have never encountered any trouble, but Protestants looking to live here have sometimes been attacked with stones and slogans. Every Sunday morning, men and women in their best clothes pour into the Cathedral of Our Lady of Valencia for Mass. On Christmas Eve, virtually the entire population crams into the cathedral for midnight Mass; the singing of carols and hymns continues well into the early hours.

WHEN IT CAME to troubles seen and horrors experienced, Jayamma, the advocate’s cook, wanted it known that her life had been second to none. In the space of twelve years her dear mother had given birth to eleven children. Nine of them had been girls. Yes, nine! Now, that’s trouble. By the time Jayamma was born, number eight, there was no milk in her mother’s breasts-they had to feed her an ass’s milk in a plastic bottle. An ass’s milk, yes! Now, that’s trouble. Her father had saved enough gold only for six daughters to be married off; the last three had to remain barren virgins for life. Yes, for life. For forty years she had been put on one bus or the other and sent from one town to the next to cook and clean in someone else’s house. To feed and fatten someone else’s children. She wasn’t even told where she would be going next; it would be night, she’d be playing with her nephew-that roly-poly little fellow Brijju-and what would she hear in the living room but her sister-in-law telling some stranger or the other, “It’s a deal, then. If she stays here, she eats food for nothing; so you’re doing us a favor, believe me.” The next day Jayamma would be put on the bus again. Months would pass before she saw Brijju again. This was Jayamma’s life, an installment plan of troubles and horrors. Who had more to complain about on this earth?

But at least one horror was coming to an end. Jayamma was about to leave the advocate’s house.

She was a short, stooped woman in her late fifties, with a glossy silver head of hair that seemed to give off light. A large black wart over her left eyebrow was the kind that is taken for an auspicious sign in an infant. There were always pouches of dark skin shaped like garlic cloves under her eyes, and her eyeballs were rheumy from chronic sleeplessness and worry.