Vairum folds his arms and leans victoriously against the closed door. He points at Janaki and says, “I always knew you were the smart one. You did it. You deserve to marry this family, Janaki. You got them, just like I knew you would, given a chance. Ha-haaa!” He claps his hands just once and holds them together as though shaking his own hand. “Oh, my girl, you are going to have a good life. Just the life your mother would have wanted for you.”

Janaki smiles warily at him. Kamalam turns and goes upstairs. Janaki leaves her uncle and grandmother to talk to each other. This is none of her business. She goes and changes out of her sari, smoothes its folds a last time and uses a stick in the corner to hang it tidily on the sari rod above her head. She goes to find Kamalam on the roof.

Kamalam is looking off the roof at the street and doesn’t look when Janaki joins her. Her voice sounds funny when she asks, “So when do you think it’s going to happen?”

“What, the wedding?” Janaki frowns.

“What else?”

“I don’t know,” Janaki shrugs.

“You’re so lucky,” Kamalam murmurs. “You’re so lucky.”

“Why? Because they’re rich?”

“Everything, Janaki Akka.”

Janaki doesn’t say anything. She feels apprehensive, despite liking Baskaran. Being rich doesn’t seem like a guarantee of anything. Minister’s mother went mad; the people three doors down had to sell their grand house and move into a flat in Thiruchi where they share a bathroom with three other families; she even thinks her paternal grandparents once were rich. Where is her father in all this? Shouldn’t he be making these arrangements?

Downstairs, Sivakami has screwed up her courage to the point of recklessness.

“This boy.” She clears her throat. “He is not even a graduate. Rich boys have less motivation to work than boys from the middle class.”

“His elder brothers are working.” Vairum looks up from where he lies on a bamboo mat. This is exceptional-he never rests-so the morning’s triumph must have worn him out, or maybe he is scheming further.

“We don’t know under what circumstances.” Sivakami gathers momentum. “So many families are losing their lands these days. Not everyone has done as well as we have. We have done well because of your efforts and your uncles’. What if they lose their wealth, like so many have?”

“Like the family of my dear brother-in-law?” Vairum is not about to permit his mood to be spoiled. “This is not such a family. Much of their wealth, I believe, is tied up in this charitable trust they have the responsibility for running. They are good Brahmins, Amma.” He smiles at her, and she looks away from a wicked glint in his gaze. “Surely you appreciate that I have ensured that for your sake.”

Sivakami has said all she is capable of saying. Vairum will do what he wants. Marriages, she thinks, are made in heaven.

Vairum, in a rare conciliatory mood, unintentionally echoes Sivakami’s thoughts. “It’s in God’s hands, Amma. Let’s settle it like we did my marriage. First reason, then religion. This is how to make marriages in the new world. Pay attention.”

On an auspicious day shortly after, Janaki undertakes a visit to the Rathnagirishwarar hill temple with Vairum and Sivakami. Just as in Vairum’s case those many years ago, they have taken a plate full of offerings and two small paper packages of roughly equal size. One contains a white flower, which would signify a bad choice; the other has a red flower, a positive sign. Vairum insisted on organizing the offerings just as he has everything else. Sivakami makes a surreptitious survey of the plate. He doesn’t seem to have forgotten anything.

The priest, completing the puja, holds the plate out to them, admirably unconcerned with his words and actions, apart from an appraising look flicked at the girl whose fate clearly hangs in the offerings’ balance. Vairum reaches out to choose a flower, but Sivakami clucks, and he pulls back his hand with an evanescent pout as she nods at Janaki. Janaki’s hand hovers over the plate a moment as she glances at her uncle and then chooses one of the two packets. The priest hands the plate back to Sivakami. Janaki awaits further instructions.

“Open the packet, Janaki!” Vairum says, awfully jolly. “It’s in God’s hands now!”

Janaki unwraps the packet she has chosen and a red mass of petals unfurls in her palm, covering exactly the dot of henna, now faded to a deep orange, which Kamalam had patted onto her hand for the girl-seeing.

God must be on Vairum’s side. He snatches up the other packet and sets it alight on the nearest oil lamp. Left hand on right wrist, he respectfully offers the flaming packet to the altar, giving it back to God. None but God will ever know its contents.

Janaki, her fate decided, begins picturing herself with Baskaran. His height matches hers well. She can’t remember his eyes but she thinks they were kind. He spoke five or six words. Each one is burned in her mind-even though she was of two minds that day. He wore scent.

Kamalam awaits her on the roof and they go over every detail without restraint, Kamalam swallowing her sadness in deference to Janaki’s hoped-for happiness, even giggling guiltily at Dhoraisamy’s manner and the mother-in-law’s girth. By the time they get to the topic of the groom, they are a little giddy with anxiety and confidences.

“His skin is very fair,” Kamalam judges.

Janaki says slowly, “Yes, he’s very fair.”

This is suddenly, illogically, very funny. “He’s fair!” they say. “He’s so fair! Oh, he’s so fair,” laughing until they are heaving and gasping on the floor, holding their cramping guts, resting their forehead on the shadowed strip along the roof’s western edge.

Janaki sits up and leans against the parapet.

“Well, he is,” she sniffs.

It’s too soon. They’re off again, choking tears, aching guts, and the big hot sun gone down.

SOME SIX WEEKS LATER, Sivakami receives her invitation, just like everyone else on the Brahmin quarter-and elsewhere in the presidency, and possibly beyond. Vairum has associates everywhere now. He’s putting Cholapatti on the map, as empire builders have always done for their hometowns, even if he seems to be doing it more to spite his origins than to commemorate them.

Printed in Madras on pumpkin-coloured paper so thick and soft one could sew clothes from it, in royal purple ink with a stylized Ganesha stamped in gilt, the invitation includes both a Tamil and an English version, confirming that there must be foreigners on the guest list. Anyone would be pleased to receive it, and indeed, almost every family that does receive one saves it. What it says is this:

C. H. Vairum has the pleasure of inviting you to the wedding of

Sowbhagyavati N. Janaki,

daughter of

Sri I. M. Nagarajan, called Goli

(Indian Revenue Service, Indrapuram) and

(late) Srimathi N. Thangam

with

Chiranjeevi P.D. Baskaran

son of

Sri P.P. Dhoraisamy (Landholder, Pandiyoor. and

Srimathi N. Kalpagam

Sivakami is disappointed though unsurprised that Vairum has issued the invitations in his name instead of Goli’s. They have heard from Goli only once since Thangam’s death, when he came to Sivakami’s house for an hour and made noise about how it was time for Laddu to come and work for him. Goli did not look well. He had lost weight, so that his eyes and jaw seemed overly prominent and his clothes, old and expensive, were a bit big to flatter him the way they did when he was younger. It was midday and Laddu was out at the oil processing plant. He grew impatient and left. Sivakami never told Laddu and Goli never returned. Laddu has done well at the plant, against all expectations. Vairum has promoted him to overseer and Laddu would have been very ill-advised to leave.

“Perhaps,” Sivakami speculates aloud, to Muchami, showing him the invitation, “perhaps Vairum didn’t even know how to contact Goli?”