“Muchami?” says Vairum, and they point to Muchami’s hut. It’s the longest conversation he’s had with them since his earliest overtures with trades and math. In the hut, Muchami tells Vairum it’s these talents he must summon, to determine if he is cheating his tenant, if his tenant is cheating him, if a merchant is cheating him or anyone else. The acceptability of the cheating involves other sorts of skills, he explains to the solemn boy, other varieties of calculations.

“Don’t mistake me,” Muchami says. “Your father managed his lands by the code of your caste. You can see that your mother, too, is as strict as strict can be with herself. A person must have a code. Then, if any man says, ‘You have done a wrong thing,’ you will be able to stand up and say, ‘According to my principles, it was right. And I can live by the principles of no other man.’ Understand?”

Vairum had grasped all the methods of calculation using weight, cost, quality and season on first explanation, but now wags his head with deep and evident uncertainty. Calculating on the principle of caste? What kind of maths is this?

“You see, Vairum, your father was a real Brahmin. He was a scholar and a healer. He could not be taken for a fool, nor could he appear greedy. How could he one day chastise a poor man for keeping back some few extra grains, and the next, give to the same man holy ash to quell his child’s diarrhea? He couldn’t. Yet he also couldn’t make of himself a laughingstock when every Mussulman market-man is giving him half-half his lentils’ worth. So, first thing first: I do most of the negotiating. These peasants are my castefellows. I know all of what they know, and more, and I know how to make them believe I know even more than that. Until I’m better, don’t bother doing any negotiating. You are just keeping an eye on things. Secondly, I will tell you all I know-and they know this. Good?”

Vairum nods with somewhat more confidence or, at least, relief: it’s evident that until Muchami returns to work, he’ll be able to stick to familiar territory.

That evening and the next, Vairum works diligently to make his own copy of his mother’s map. On parchment the exact size of the original, he measures, draws and annotates, first in lead and then, meticulously, in ink. He returns his mother’s copy to her and tells her, “Ask me any question, any property. Go on.”

“You don’t want to be looking at your copy?”

“No need. Ask. Come on.”

“Veerappan.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Crops and yields, nine months ago.”

“… Mm. No, not like that.” He waves his hand impatiently. “Ask me about now, not ancient history.”

“Oh, yes. Well, tell me who-all owns the pond and the well on Achchappan’s plot.”

He is silent for a second, then bursts out impatiently, “Why do you keep asking me things that are not even on the map? How am I supposed to know all that? I’m in school, not out gossiping with the tenants.”

“I’m sorry, dear one. I… thought all that was on the map.” She believes this because, if it weren’t, how would she know the answers?

“Well if it were, I would know it.”

“Of course, my dear,” she says, eager to keep their feeling of complicity.

“I know everything I need to know,” he reminds her. “I got all the calculations right, first time.”

“Of course.” She knows how smart he is.

He neglects to mention that this applied only to the mathematical calculations. Calculations that factor caste by profession to the power of social status, divided by wealth-these, he will have to grow into. His mother guesses at this and is pleased anyway that he has learned enough to become interested, and is interested enough to learn more.

Each day of Muchami’s absence, Vairum rises an hour earlier than usual and walks the fields before school. In the late afternoon, he walks the lands for another hour or two, beginning and ending this walk with a visit to Muchami, to discuss his findings. Several people cheat Vairum; several people who always try to cheat Muchami don’t try to cheat Vairum, perhaps out of sympathy for the fatherless child. Vairum prefers being cheated: he wants to be treated like a man.

In the first weeks of Muchami’s recovery, Vairum shares every detail of his discoveries with his mother. His evening meal sits untouched as he relates litanies of rules and exceptions in ownership, announces projections of profits and shortfalls, and even starts making tentative pronouncements on various feuds. His mother reminds him repeatedly to eat, but each time, he takes a mere mouthful and starts talking again.

Sivakami already knows much of what he tells her but enjoys his enthusiasm hugely. She delights in watching her son learn, and learn something close to what she herself knows, unlike the formulas and geography and English that fill his days at school, so far away up the road into town. She can’t walk a mile to school in his shoes, but she can shadow him through the fields. He, too, is learning that he likes these formulas better than those of math, physics and chemistry, where the laws are those of the physical world and cannot be bought or bent.

Starting from the fourth week of Muchami’s convalescence, though, Vairum grows increasingly circumspect. One day, as Sivakami serves him his morning meal and he silently eats, she asks lightly, with no trace of resentment, “Why do you not tell me any longer, of the little wars between tenants, of daily variations in monthly projected income? You have not said a word about your work, not for days.”

He looks up, a little surprised. “Are you interested?”

“Of course. I studied all this, too.”

“Yes, but only because you had to.”

“Yes, the same reason as you.” She smiles.

“But it’s different for me.” He frowns.

“How is it different?” she asks, happy to be having a conversation about their mutual interest, but curious about his silence.

“It’s different because you kept count, money in, money out, revenues, expenses, salaries and taxes.” He is impatient. “Counting is no challenge for me. Don’t worry, everything and everyone will be looked after. But land is for growing, after all, and even if Brahmins are not farmers, I am going to make ours grow.”

“Brahmins should not be acquisitive, either.” She feels it’s important to remind him, in his father’s absence, that he has a responsibility to the traditions of their caste.

“I don’t care about money!” he bleats, and she is cowed and impressed by his outrage. “I’m doing it for the challenge only.” He sounds far away. “To prove I can.”

Dreams of dominion? That’s not what he said. As Sivakami serves him his breakfast, she looks at him closely. His eyes are as dark as ever, the future too far back in them to be seen.

18. The Arrival of Children 1915

IF SIVAKAMI WERE TO BE ASKED-though who would ask her?-she might say she knows there’s a war on in the world, but when is there not? She doesn’t read the newspaper-she used to browse the headlines and advertisements, but she stopped the subscriptions after her husband died. She thought she would restart them if or when Vairum asked, but shortly after Vairum started making rounds of the fields, he also began stopping in on Minister daily, in late afternoon, where he reads the English and Tamil papers.

Gayatri tells Sivakami that Minister has told her that Vairum is indifferent to politics.

“Then what do they talk about?” Sivakami asks.

“Politics!”

When Gayatri carries gossip from her husband she almost always repeats it verbatim-she says she doesn’t understand it well enough to paraphrase, but appears to get enough to take an interest.

“My husband is called to politics by his nature, that’s what he says, but he says Vairum is calculating, neutral, that he never expresses a preference for one party over another, never seems to have an opinion about a political gain or loss, but still wants to know all the details. You know, on days when he doesn’t have classes, he comes in the mornings, when all the other men come. If he weren’t in school, I’m sure he’d be a regular.”