“Oh, listen!” Janaki says. “She’s playing ‘Jaggadhodharana’! It brings me straight back to Cholapatti, Amma, that sound. Next summer, we’ll all gather there, all the cousins, and Vani Mami will bring her child, and we can all look after it while she plays.”

Sita’s children swarm into the kitchen, whining for tapioca, and Janaki leads them out into the dining room.

DECEMBER BLEEDS INTO JANUARY, January creeps away and February swells into fullness, but Vani does not go into labour. She exhibits all the torpor and discomfort of advanced pregnancy, as though her burden is too great to bear and too precious to pass on, but she looks no bigger.

Sivakami is a patient woman, but she’s not accustomed to waiting so long for this particular gratification. Gayatri, who had planned to come for the baby’s naming ceremony, finally comes anyway, nearly two months after Vani’s supposed due date.

“What on earth is going on?” she whispers loudly, as Sivakami serves her coffee in the kitchen. Vani is playing her veena in the sitting room, providing them with a cover of sound. “She’s not pregnant, is she?”

“Of course she is.” Sivakami combines the decoction with milk and sugar, pouring it from tumbler to bowl to mix it. “They must have miscalculated, miscounted.”

“How long has it been since she last had her period?”

“I can’t ask that,” Sivakami responds reasonably, setting the coffee down in front of Gayatri and fetching biscuits.

“Have they seen a doctor?”

“I should hope not,” Sivakami ejects, tartly indignant.

After a pause, Gayatri says, “I’m going to ask.”

When Vani, after playing, comes into the kitchen for a drink of water, Gayatri beckons her.

“Come, dear.” She pats the place beside her, and Vani plumps herself down awkwardly. “You look exhausted. I know all too well what it is like to be in this stage-every day seems like an eternity. Tell me, though: when did you last have your period?”

Vani frowns and looks away.

“Come now. You don’t want this to go too long. It’s not healthy for the baby, nor for you. You know there are remedies to help the baby along. Shall I find out about some for you?”

“No doctors,” Vani says loudly, and Gayatri startles.

“Has Vairum taken you to any doctors?” Gayatri inquires.

“No,” Vani says emphatically, and Sivakami thinks she can imagine the scenes between them.

“I have in mind traditional remedies,” Gayatri says soothingly, and Vani looks more interested and less wary.

“But you don’t want to take them too early-it’s important to know that your baby is fully matured,” Gayatri explains. “When did you have your last period?”

Vani purses her lips. Gayatri sighs.

After some long minutes, Vani replies. “April.”

“April…” Gayatri counts off on her fingers. “So you might have been due as late as February. Let’s give it another week and I’ll see if my daughter-in-law knows anyone who can compound what you need.”

Through March, the weather grows hot, and the atmosphere in the house feels oppressive. Gayatri secures and brings several herbal composites, which Sivakami prepares, boiling five roots in water for ten minutes, mixing the resulting decoction into milk and giving it to Vani to drink on an empty stomach. Vani follows the regime for three days, until Vairum learns of it and throws the herbalist’s packets out the window of the kitchen.

“How dare you endanger our child with this witchcraft?” he asks. “I brought you here at Vani’s insistence, but if I catch you again doing anything to jeopardize this pregnancy…” He leaves the threat unspoken.

Sivakami hasn’t slept much since her arrival in Madras, and she lies awake for a week of nights after the confrontation, desiccated by sorrow. How could he think she would do anything to endanger the grandchild she wants, as she would readily admit, more than any of the others? A son of her son, a son of her son…

April bloats, May bursts-and still no child. Sivakami was to have returned to Cholapatti by now-she has been putting off her grandchildren, who all expected to convene in their natal home for the school holidays. It has become a tradition for those with school-age children to return, for the cousins to sleep together in the hall, play together near the canal, visit Gayatri’s grandchildren in gangs and meet other children of their age on the Brahmin quarter. And now there are the three youngest ones in Thiruchi, whom she is missing.

She cautiously broaches the subject with Vairum, who has become increasingly preoccupied and busy of late.

“I don’t see how you can go,” he replies, without looking up from the paper he is reading on the divan, “but they are welcome to come here.”

Janaki and Kamalam decide against coming, not wanting to crowd, and having visited so recently, but Saradha brings her family, as well as Radhai, Krishnan and Raghavan, who are thrilled to have the chance to see the city. Vairum makes a car available to them, though Saradha spends most of her time with Sivakami. Janaki had come to see her eldest sister the week prior and has sent a large packet of holy ash, along with a letter.

My husband had to go and consult a seer. Two of our tenants’ plows were stolen, and they asked him to investigate. So he went to this man we heard of who has a very high reputation. The man told my husband: you will find your missing items in two separate places, one high, one low, but equidistant from the river. Seek and you will find. And it was true! But I also had him ask what is wrong with Vani Mami. The man said exactly this: “Your relative has a baby within her whose soul’s growth is being stunted by the evil eye. Take this holy ash, and tell her to rub it on her belly daily as an antidote. Within a year, the baby will grow.”

Sivakami thinks that surely Vairum cannot see holy ash as in any way harmful to the child-he is not superstitious but he is religious. But when, two months later, Janaki writes to her to say that the seer was arrested for leading a burglary ring-his henchmen would steal agricultural implements and he would collect money from the owners for describing how to find them-Sivakami discreetly tells Vani to discontinue this treatment also.

When August blooms like an foul-smelling flower, Vani is still acting elephantine with expectancy, though she has gained no more weight. If anything, she may have lost some, and has begun once more to look dull and drawn, as she did in the long, empty years before her pregnancy. Nearly all the glass bangles she received have broken, a bad omen, but who ever wears them this long? The lonely chime of those few remaining sounds like the dregs of misplaced hope. Vairum’s overinflated good humour has fizzled; he is short with his staff and talks to Sivakami as though she is a nuisance.

Gayatri, whose Madras son has had a child, visits, and Sivakami broaches the topic with her, saying Vairum has twice brought doctors to the house, but that Vani refuses to be seen by them.

“Akka,” Gayatri sighs, and looks away. “Vani’s pregnancy is not advancing because she is not pregnant. Something else may be wrong with her-early menopause? I don’t know. But she’s not… pregnant.”

Is Gayatri suggesting Vani has been lying? Why would she do that?

“I’m not saying she’s lying,” Gayatri continues in a gentle tone. “I… I’ve never heard of something like this from a woman. But it happens, with animals. I remember my brother’s dog acted completely-”

“Really, Gayatri,” Sivakami shouts at her friend. Comparison to a dog is one of the grand insults. “Sometimes you just go too far.”

“Please, Akka, don’t take me wrong,” Gayatri protests, “I’m sorry.”

But Sivakami is furious and they part awkwardly.

Sivakami putters around the kitchen in a rage, prepares meals and goes through the motions of her day, before finally, in the depth of night, acknowledging that, of all the possible explanations, this one makes the most sense. She is surprised that Vairum, with his reverence for reason and science, has not seen it before now. Maybe he has and is not admitting it. The ways of the heart are obscure, though: how can he give up this hope? He can’t.