Minister clears his throat, steps in. “Promise your mother, and then look lively. Only twenty-five minutes till the train.” He nods at Muchami, who picks up the valise.

Vairum mumbles something.

“Huh?” The volume of Sivakami’s voice startles both her son and herself.

“I promise, good?” he repeats. “Can I go?”

Sivakami is seeing two scenes at once. She watches her son mount the cart-shiny dark shoes and shiny dark head and large, slim hands dangling from thin adolescent arms, his father’s hands, but for a large white patch emerging from one sleeve and encompassing two knuckles-as she also sees a moment from their past: their family, wading into the Kaveri. She recalls the feeling of her hair ravelling its binds and floating up in the breeze cooling itself along the water. Baby Vairum, arms clasped around her knees as Muchami calls to him from farther out in the current. Hanumarathnam, helping little Thangam out of her paavaadai on the bank.

Watching Muchami help Murthy into the cart, she feels as though she is looking at and through the river’s surface, seeing her own world reflected and also seeing the otherworld of fishes and insects. The otherworld of her memory feels at least as real: Muchami is several steps out in the river, the water only as deep as his shins. Vairum lets go of Sivakami one hand at a time with Muchami’s wiry grasp around his chubby baby elbows. Delighted, he floats in the water, little-boy face to the sun, with Muchami squatting, holding him up. Hanumarathnam squats to do the same for Thangam, but she doesn’t float. He tries to lift her from the armpits, but she’s too heavy. Hanumarathnam falls, a big splash, and gets up laughing. Thangam splashes, too, slaps the water in excitement, then covers her mouth with her hands. Sivakami claps in excitement, and Vairum claps, too, laughing in the sun. Oh, those eyes.

Before her now, in the Brahmin quarter, the bullock’s back gleams, then dulls with dust up the fatty hump. The tail flicks once as the cart rocks around the corner and away. Vairum doesn’t look back. No weeping crowd, no running children. There are no rituals for bidding farewell to a son.

THIRUCHINAPALLI.

Vairum has read up a little on the history of the city, poring through the Trichinopoly District Gazetteer at Minister’s house. He likes the British spelling-as though Thiruchi were a transplanted Greek city. In any case, this has been universally shortened to “Trichy” or “Thiruchi”-certain names are a mouthful for Tamils and non-Tamils uniformly. Families of the region, though, call the city Kottai-fort-for the city’s most prominent feature, a small mountain fortified by the illustrious Nayaks in their reign, now the site of the city’s favoured temple.

Kottai is the last stop before Thiruchi Junction, and Vairum remembers, when he was eleven and just learning to keep track of such things, panicking when he saw that Minister, who had brought him to Thiruchi on their annual shoe-buying trip, wasn’t moving. He only knew Thiruchi by this name and naturally thought they were missing their stop. Minister laughed and patted his knee. “Kottai is Kottai, m’boy, and Trichy is Trichy. See?” he said, pointing at the sign as they pulled into the main station.

Vairum shakes his head at the memory as they pull into the big station now. He was so green! Murthy is still drowsing, his head lolling to all points of the compass, and Vairum shakes him. He waits for the two immense, slumbering barristers opposite them to wake and arrange themselves so he can extract his valise from behind their legs-brothers, they had explained in the early part of the journey, when everyone was alert and conversational. The young barristers, who were in Kulithalai doing an official and personal favour for an old friend, are also St. Joseph ’s alumni and heartily pleased to meet the young admittee. They are so obese that each occupies nearly half the wooden bench, their legs dangling forward over the below-bench storage area like mahogany pillars in some hall of justice.

As the train halts, Murthy wakes, smacking his lips, and rearranges his oily kudumi-the hairstyle, front of the head shaved, the rest in a ponytail, has not yet been thrust from fashion by British influence-so that it is equally but differently dishevelled. “We’re here.”

It seems to Vairum that the equivalent of the entire population of Kulithalai streams past on the platform. The thrill of arrival in the city never seems to diminish. And now he is to live here!

The barristers awaken with snorts, compose their linen jackets, put on their Parsi-style caps. Murthy follows them to the door with Vairum’s suitcase and they exchange addresses on the platform. The lawyers will change trains here to return home, and Murthy and Vairum are cordially invited to visit if ever they find themselves in Pandiyoor, a market town in the Madurai district.

Murthy leads Vairum along the platform, past the first- and second-class resting rooms, past the steamy tiffin stand, past the small station offices panelled in dark wood and full of uniformed men with moustaches, toward the exit, beyond which the city quivers, mirage-like and muscular.

Late that afternoon, back in Cholapatti, Sivakami has cooked a lot of food and is wondering who will eat it. She has little appetite.

She wanders into the garden. The birds are getting active in anticipation of the evening cool, and the yard seems very loud. Was it this loud when Vairum was still here? She checks on the progress of the papaya, notes the coconut palms look a bit dry. From the northeast, she can hear hoots of young male laughter-the Brahmin quarter’s youth gathering to go to Kulithalai for an evening of loitering in the market square. Muchami tells her that the ones with money play cards at the club. She imagines her Samanthibakkam nephews doing exactly the same. Nice boys, but not brilliant. What if she had stayed, and seen those boys going to secular schools, and her own son in a mediocre local paadasaalai? He would have grown bitter, sharper than any of them, but with no potential to earn. His cousins were friendly when they were small, but during ten years of living on her brothers’ goodwill, their relations would have changed. It wouldn’t have been charity; she would have paid all of her own costs and Vairum’s, but no one would have been permitted to know or acknowledge this; that would be bad form. Vairum would not have been the king of that household, the way he is here, in his own home. She imagines her nephews calling Vairum’s name and laughing.

But she is not imagining it. The boys on the other side of her garden wall, they are talking about her son. She moves closer, though there is no need, their voices are clear as well water.

“He came of age and was taken away!” one snorts, impressed at his own wit.

“Yeah, he came of age and rode away on a bullock cart!” says another, as though it was he who thought of it.

“Like a bride!” says another, as though no one had understood the joke before.

Sivakami knows, through her sources, that none of these boys made any mark, academically. There was only one other Cholapatti boy, apart from Vairum, who had done well. He had gone to Thanjavur, where one of his four sisters was married into a family of revenue officials. His parents had eight other sons, two of whom might even be in the crowd massed at her garden wall. Their brother was not being insulted.

Sivakami crouches by her wall, her face hot.

Then a neighbouring door opens: not Murthy’s, to her left, but the other, to her right, Dharnakarna, the witch.

From beyond her eastern wall, Sivakami hears the young witch’s slightly muffled voice: “Move away from my door with your dirty talk!”