Sivakami wipes her tears, then puts her hand to her forehead, not looking at him.

“I will arrange the marriages of my sister’s remaining daughters,” Vairum swears, standing over her. “I will…” he chokes, this little boy who swore never to take from his sister, only to give, and who, as she lay dying, could not give her what she needed any more than his mother could. “I will arrange their marriages on terms rational and religious,” he sputters. “No more horoscopes. Let people take responsibility for their actions.”

Thirteen days after Thangam’s death, the priests are paid and a feast prepared to bid the soul pass on.

The next day, the Cholapatti folk make ready to return. Thangam’s elder daughters will also go back there for a time with their children. Goli goes out at some point-no one sees him leave. Presumably, he has gone to back to work, his bereavement leave concluded. They are milling around, feeling it rude not to have bid him farewell, but Vairum hustles them to the train mid-afternoon, reminding them that Goli did not pay them the same courtesy.

At the Cholapatti station, they ask the children of the station master to run and alert Muchami to their arrival so that he can bring the bullock cart. When Sivakami sees Muchami’s familiar silhouette emerge from the now-solid dark, she feels herself relax and come close to tears again.

Muchami jumps down and, putting his palms together and bowing quickly to them several times, sets about loading the baggage. Sivakami gets into the cart first, without saying anything to him. The family had not communicated with him from Munnur, knowing that he would intuit the reason for so long an absence. He fusses over them, asking, “Are you comfortable?”

Vairum has mounted the front. When Muchami hops up beside him and takes the reins, he asks, “So, Vairum, everything taken care of?” Vairum nods perfunctorily. Muchami glances one last time over his shoulder before starting. He catches Sivakami’s eye, and his face crumples.

“Our gold,” he whispers, turning to the front. He twitches the rein against the bullocks backs with a “tch-tch” to get them started. “Pure gold. Such a good girl.”

“Yes, yes,” Vairum sighs. “She deserved much better.”

Muchami weeps audibly for the duration of the trip home while the occupants of the cart behind him are silent, having spent much of their grief during the formal mourning period and being tired from travel. Muchami is far less demonstrative than many servants in his position, who would weep for form’s sake, as servants are supposed to weep for masters, more even than for their own families. Sivakami knows him to be sincere, knows he feels exactly as she does: that while Thangam’s marriage may have killed her-by whatever means-Sivakami had no choice and did the best she could have done.

32. Not Another Mother 1940

THE NEXT DAY, hordes of Brahmins from up and down the quarter come to pay condolences. Sivakami wishes she were more like others, like her granddaughter Saradha, for instance, who clearly takes comfort in hearing the same encomiums repeated again and again by people who barely knew Thangam. Instead, as when Hanumarathnam died, Sivakami wishes they would all keep quiet, or, better yet, stay away.

When Muchami’s and Mari’s families come to the back to pay respects, gnashing and screeching as is appropriate in their community, Sivakami wonders if it is within her rights to tell them to leave. Out of consideration for Muchami and Mari, she doesn’t. But Mari does-telling her parents and her mother-in-law that their histrionics are not needed. Mari herself, when she arrived that morning, expressed her condolences to Sivakami with quiet dignity and went about her chores.

In the days after they return from Munnur, little Krishnan takes to sleeping at Rukmini’s house. By the time Sivakami is fully aware that it has become a habit, she is not sure how to break it. It seems cruel to deny a motherless child all he is receiving from Rukmini: he accompanies her in every activity; at home, he sits in her lap; they play games, have secret jokes and a code language. Rukmini makes sweets for him daily and bids him bring his sisters to eat them.

Sivakami is in a quandary: she wants Krishnan to enjoy these attentions, but she feels she must remain responsible, in certain ways, for his moral and physical upkeep. She also thinks Rukmini might be too soft, too grateful for Krishnan’s presence, to hold to certain old-fashioned child-raising practices.

So Sivakami requires that Krishnan come to take his breakfast at her house: pazhiah sadam, day-old rice, mixed with yogourt-the best thing for a young tummy. One of his sisters feeds him-Sivakami herself cannot touch it because it is kept to ferment overnight. Every Wednesday and Saturday, she insists he comes to take his oil bath and, every few months, a dose of castor oil. In other words, she asks only that Krishnan complete the severer and less pleasant of his basic requirements at her house because the sense of discipline and plain living these impart-the gifts of a conservative upbringing-will remain the measure of his origins.

Sivakami is motivated by concern not only for Krishnan’s well-being, but also for the family’s. “A house that gives a son for adoption has no sons for seven generations.” The proverb reverberates in her conscience. Krishnan is with her for safekeeping; he belongs to the house of his father. Rukmini may tend him further, but she cannot be allowed to feel he is her son.

Rukmini understands Sivakami’s concerns, though she doesn’t think about them too deeply. She is flattered by the violent resistance Krishnan displays whenever his sisters come to fetch him. While she doesn’t interfere with their missions, neither does she assist.

Krishnan is always reluctant to leave Rukmini-she is his favourite person. He doesn’t respond to cajoling nor to ordering. He is becoming the boy Sivakami meant him to be: precious and headstrong. Nor can his sisters bribe him-little they offer can compete with his treatment at Rukmini’s. Increasingly, they resort to tricks to get him to come home. Fortunately, Janaki proves herself a master of minor deceptions, and enjoys devising them-for a good cause, of course.

Sita stays on to keep company with her family and give them comfort in the wake of Thangam’s death. (Or so goes the protocol. Sita’s specialty has always been discomfort, and relative marital happiness has not gentled her. Her husband is a stable, timid man, a compiler of agricultural statistics who admires and resents her. She is not interested in his feelings, but his behaviour suits her well and she has seen no need to change hers.) When she is the one sent to fetch Krishnan, she blackmails him, explaining to him in a low, sincere voice that unless he comes with her immediately, she will fix it so that he never sees Rukmini again. Krishnan listens, wide-eyed, without reason to disbelieve her, and obeys.

“Poor Akka,” she remarks the Friday after their return to Cholapatti, as she and her sisters sit, after their oil bath, drying their hair.

“Mm-hm,” says Janaki, peering critically at her embroidery, a bouquet of flowers, none of which she recognizes. She drew the pattern after a photo in one of Minister’s books on English gardens.

“Forced to give up her children one by one like that,” Sita continues.

Janaki and Kamalam are silent, Janaki looking at Sita, Kamalam lying on a cot with her hair fanned and falling over the edges, incense burning beneath to perfume it.

“I could never.” Sita shakes her head. “I’d rather die.”

“Well, she didn’t give us up.” Janaki finally rises to the bait. “Amma just looked after us for them because Appa’s job…”

Sita points at Janaki. “Vairum Mama stole us because he’s jealous.”