“No-” Janaki starts.

“And because he hates Appa. He would do anything to sabotage Appa. Poor Appa, just trying to make an honest living, and he has this business shark for a brother-in-law.”

Janaki tries again lamely. “What-”

“Is your hair on fire, Kamalam?” Sita inquires sprightly.

Kamalam, who had let her eyes drift shut, springs up, trembling.

“Oh,” Sita laughs, “I guess it was just the incense smoke. You know I never think you wash the oil out properly. Can’t blame me for worrying!”

Janaki stands. “You look like you could use a nap, Sitakka.” She gestures to Kamalam with her head and starts for the veranda. “Don’t you feel tired?”

“No,” Sita replies. “Where are you two going?”

Around this time, Murthy invites some cousins to stay with him and Rukmini. Down on their luck, as so many Brahmins are these days, they had lost their lands and home, and approached Murthy at a wedding a month or two earlier and appealed to him for assistance.

“We must help our own.” Rukmini parrots her husband’s words to Sivakami the day before the cousins arrive. “So much assistance available to those low-caste types, but Brahmins are as poor as they ever were and no one thinks about what services they give! Who will assist them?”

Sivakami agrees and congratulates her on their generosity. They are not the wealthiest family in the Brahmin quarter-that status has always been reserved for Minister’s family, though she suspects Vairum might have exceeded even them, not that it has changed her lifestyle or the children’s. Murthy and Rukmini are comfortable, though, and childless, and live modestly in a spacious house, built for the large, extended family that has dwindled to these two over the course of three short generations.

These relatives are expected to arrive by bus, and the next day, Murthy, a splash of betel-stained spittle ornamenting his fresh-pressed kurta, borrows Sivakami’s bullock cart to meet them. When he returns the cart, he brings them in to meet her. They huddle together as if persecuted and have to be bid to enter several times, Sivakami calling from the pantry.

They have been travelling and need to bathe, they protest in whimpers. The wife is barely four foot nine, and her husband perhaps two inches taller. Their faces are pinched and ingratiating, their clothing poor. Their son, a strapping, touchy-looking youth, carries their little baggage.

“Welcome,” says Sivakami with energetic friendliness, inspired by Rukmini and Murthy’s caste feeling to ensure they feel warmly received. She sends Janaki and Kamalam out toward them, one with a tray of tumblers of water, the other with plates of snacks. “Eat something small at least. And you must come take a meal here soon. Our home is yours, just as it is Rukmini and Murthy’s.”

The couple, who had been casting looks of rapid appraisal at the Ramar, the safe and the girls’ jewellery, thank her, wagging their heads so vigorously their bodies move. The son smiles meanly and turns to go.

“Ugh,” Sita shudders, when they have barely gone. “Unattractive lot!”

“No more out of you, young lady!” Sivakami’s sharpness startles both her and her granddaughters. “They are in need and it is an act of good to give charity. Rukmini and Murthy will do well in their next lives.”

Sita doesn’t retort but later tells Janaki, “I’m all in favour of caste solidarity, but I have a bad feeling about them.”

Just because Sita said it, Janaki feels compelled to disagree. Privately, though, she fears Sita intuits malignancy all too accurately.

WHAT A STRANGE FEW MONTHS this has been for our dear ones on the Brahmin quarter, Sivakami thinks, a couple of months later. January is drawing in, with the Pongal holiday. They won’t celebrate this festival, nor any other, for a year, while they are in mourning.

In September, Thangam’s death. Then, last month, Gayatri’s mother-in-law had decided someone had hidden a cobra in her bun, and tried to use the scythe to cut off her hair. She killed herself-not as quickly as would have been merciful, but still, it was a relief to the family and probably to the old woman herself, who had for years been living in an increasing state of paranoia.

And now Rukmini is ill. She has been suffering from a severe digestive affliction since about the time Murthy’s cousins came to stay with them. At first, it had seemed no more than heartburn. Rukmini confided in Sivakami: she feared her cousin-in-law’s cooking didn’t agree with her. The cousin was helping in the kitchen. Her cooking tasted wonderful, and it was nice to eat someone else’s food. The cousin cooked Thanjavur-style, and the flavours were quite exotic. But Rukmini had grown scared of eating. She was mystified. The vegetables were not undercooked. She was being served items in the correct order. She had worried that perhaps the cousin-in-law was violating rules of ecchel, the contamination of saliva, and patthu, the contamination of cooked food, which orthodox Brahmins observe strictly. What if she was insufficiently superstitious, one of these progressive sorts, and so was not washing her hands after touching cooked rice, for instance? But the cook, who watched her, said she was quite above board. And no one else in the household was in any discomfort. Rukmini’s stomach alone bloated and kicked after every meal.

And it grew large: it was only when Sivakami began noticing Rukmini’s tummy that she inquired. Rukmini had been a sturdy woman, with the flat stomach and well-proportioned hips that are the preserve of childless women. Now she has grown considerably thinner, though her tummy has inflated like a rubber tire.

When Sivakami told Rukmini she was not looking well, Rukmini didn’t understand, because saying someone has grown thin is also used as a formality, a greeting, to show concern. So it took a few tries before Sivakami could make clear that she genuinely thought Rukmini was looking very thin and that her swelling stomach might be a cause for concern. She asked if, perhaps, Rukmini could, after all these years, be pregnant. Rukmini laughed and blushed, clapped her cheeks and made slapping motions in the air with her hands.

“No, no,” she said, “I’m not pregnant. Really, the thought!” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You remember, Janaki came to help me just two weeks ago-I still get my monthlies.”

Sivakami shrugged. “Sometimes-rarely, but I’ve heard of it-women get their periods even when they’re pregnant. Or at least bleed a little.”

“Possibly,” Rukmini said politely, “but I really don’t think I’m pregnant. I don’t feel any different. Just a bit weak, maybe.”

Sivakami gave her some holy ash from Palani mountain, known for its potency in expelling unwanted foreign bodies while strengthening desirable ones. She also told Rukmini to drink a broth nightly of her brother Venketu’s patented Cure-All Concentrate^TM, as a purgative and blood-thickener. She had many extra jars, since Venketu’s wife sent a care package of their products every time a granddaughter came to Sivakami’s house to give birth.

Sivakami also advised Rukmini to take doses of their gripe water, since she had developed a terrible gas problem. Sometimes Sivakami herself would hear, from within her own house, Rukmini’s prodigiously windy emissions. Neighbourhood children shamelessly imitated the poor woman’s range of belches and farts. The sound rose even above the wash of the canal.

Rukmini conscientiously followed every prescription, but her misery did not abate. Her tummy was hard to the touch. She looked like a dying willow with a parasitic fungus clinging to its trunk.

As if all this weren’t hard enough on a woman’s vanity, Rukmini’s hair began coming out in handfuls. Rukmini’s hair had always been a bit thin, and she owned a couple of hairpieces, for special occasions. Now her own measly strands were barely sufficient to hold them on. Finally, she was reduced to sheltering her pate under her sari end, like a widow or Muslim. She was misery incarnate. Her only joy was Krishnan.