Janaki and Kamalam raise their eyebrows at each other furtively as they collect shells, flat and white with regular red zigzags on the back. Vairum and Vani stay crouched together, where the boy left them. Vairum is talking to her, a hand lightly on her arm; she is rocking back and forth slightly. As the girls return to them, Vairum stands, telling Vani gently and repeatedly to do the same, until she does.
They return to the car, walking past catamarans beached for the evening, long logs lashed together so they look exactly like giant cupped hands, upturned to receive some offering.
As they get ready for bed, alone in their room, Janaki asks Kamalam, “Didn’t you like the tiffin today?”
“Not much. It tasted funny,” Kamalam says.
“Are you feeling all right?” Janaki asks.
Kamalam had eaten well at supper, but the cooks are people they know vaguely, from Cholapatti, where they had lived down the street. The husband had been a cook-for-hire there, and Vairum brought them to Madras, saying that they would prepare food with the flavours of home, besides which they were two other Brahmins, like him, whom the people of the agraharam didn’t respect.
“I guess,” says Kamalam, lying down with a sigh, her arm over her eyes. Janaki turns down the lamp and joins her.
“Tired?” Janaki asks. She herself feels lit up from everything they’ve seen and done.
“Yes,” says Kamalam.
After a pause, Janaki asks, unsure if she should, “Why do you think Vairum Mama reacted that way to Vani Mami when she hugged that little boy? She wasn’t hurting him.”
Kamalam answers without hesitation. “She wants babies too badly, Akka. It’s tearing her up.”
Janaki is startled but knows Kamalam is right. She, too, had sensed something like this behind the scene they saw, but never would have been able to put it in words so clearly.
“Yes,” she says. “They should have babies.”
“Everyone should,” Kamalam says through a yawn, “but it’s in God’s hands.”
Within minutes, Janaki can hear that her sister is asleep, while she lies awake an hour or more, choosing and examining moments from the day as though they were snapshots in a holiday album.
The next day, Vairum takes them to his office in town, and then says the driver will take them shopping while he is in meetings. “Buy yourselves some new saris. Ask the salesmen what is fashionable-they will tell you. You can take the blouse pieces to Vani’s tailor. And Janaki, get some nice fabrics to take to your husband’s home, for quilts and cushions, that kind of thing.”
Janaki has a gay time playing the young mistress. She feels a little frustrated at Kamalam’s shyness, even while she enjoys being in charge. The younger girl stands always very close to and a little behind her sister, and tells Janaki to choose her saris and blouses for her. When they are finished, the driver skirts the city, taking them to Chromepet, where Vairum awaits them at a leather goods factory, one of a number in this district named for the chrome tanning process that took hold here late in the last century. The smell of leather, chemicals and dyes is faint outside but overpowering inside, even in the closed showroom at the upper reaches of the building. Janaki tries not to make a face and breathes shallowly as they browse the sandals. Vairum is on the company’s board and has told them each to choose a pair while he finishes work.
Kamalam starts tapping her arm frantically. Janaki peers at her. “What?” But her sister runs out of the showroom and vomits in the hallway. Janaki, mortified, takes her outside to get some air while peons rush up to clean the mess. The driver opens the car doors the moment they appear. Janaki asks him to fetch some water.
Vairum comes out a few minutes later, looking concerned. “Kamalam? Are you all right?” He crouches beside the open car door and reaches in to feel her forehead. She starts and pulls away a little. Neither girl can remember ever having been touched by their uncle. He clicks his tongue and puts his hand again to her head. “You don’t feel hot.”
“I’m feeling better, Vairum Mama.” Kamalam licks her lips. “I’m very sorry.”
“Hm. Okay. Give me a couple of minutes to finish and we’ll get you home to rest, all right? Good girl.” He goes back into the factory, his dhoti snapping between his Jodhpuri jacket and huge black shoes.
“Are you really feeling better?” Janaki asks.
“It was the smell, I think,” Kamalam whispers, not wanting the driver to hear, and shudders.
“Yes, horrible,” Janaki says. “I don’t know how he can stand it. Like a slaughterhouse or something, I imagine.”
Each day of the visit, it seems, Vairum has some entertainment planned for them, and people of the city for them to meet. Often, guests come to his home: business associates, people who wish him to support their causes, others with whom he has had some similar association in the past. They attend a concert at the Music Academy in the company of a burly, red-cheeked Dane, an investor in a fertilizer company Vairum is starting up, and a sallow Russian who will become its chief engineer. At the intermission, Vairum introduces them to luminaries, including C. Rajagopalachari, former premier of Madras, and still one of the top men in the Congress Party, and Kalki Krishnamurthy, who has published articles and stories in the weekly magazine Ananta Viketan for as long as Janaki can remember. Gayatri and Minister now subscribe to the new periodical, Kalki, that he started after his release from jail last year. Janaki, taking her cue from Sivakami and Minister, disagrees with Kalki’s politics: he is in favour of independence. Still, she can’t help feeling impressed and has often enjoyed his lighter pieces. Rukmini Arundale is also in attendance and flutters up to monopolize Vairum, crowding his nieces to one side.
On the car ride home, Vairum asks them, “So, I assume you girls recall why Mr. Rajagopalachari resigned his premiership, yes?”
Janaki and Kamalam are silent.
“Janaki?” Vairum peers at her, over Kamalam. “You need to learn to keep up. He objected to the British here declaring we were in the war on their side.”
Janaki is not sure what to say and not sure he expects her to say anything.
“You’ve read Kalki’s work, though?”
They both tell him yes.
“There are pros and cons to independence, but it is coming and we will manage. Interesting challenges ahead. I want to see what Congress does about caste. Completely outmoded. We’ll never progress as a nation, self-governed or otherwise, unless we can stop thinking people’s birth determines their worth.”
The girls are rigid in their seats, and he looks over at them and laughs.
“You don’t like this kind of talk? Get used to it. You’ve been brainwashed by your grandmother, closed up with her in that house, in that village. Why should people put up with Brahmins acting like they’re better than everyone else? I wouldn’t, in their place.”
They arrive at the house and Janaki lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. The car doors open. She looks at the driver as she gets out and he smiles at her with what now feels like threat. Are the lower orders planning a revolt? What’s wrong with everyone being in their places, doing the work that suits them? She has never questioned her place. Muchami has never questioned his place, and he and Mari admire Brahmin ways, as they should.
She doesn’t feel offended so much as confused. If people don’t aspire to emulate the Brahmins, what would they aspire to?
The next day brings more visitors, some of whom come to hear Vani play in the evening: a young Punjabi Sikh couple, she in a pale grey salwar kameez, he in a high red turban, and two Tamil Muslim men. Janaki doesn’t mind the Sikhs so much; they are practically foreign and have to speak to her in English, which she responds to in monosyllables. It feels very odd to sit in the salon with Muslims, though-are they even interested in Carnatic music? They appear highly educated and flow between English and Tamil in a way Janaki finds dizzying. It’s like trying to listen to someone who, every few phrases, turns away and mumbles.