“Status,” Muchami says simply. “He’s been buying gifts for Thangam and the babies, and new furniture.”

“He’ll go into debt,” Vairum says. “Big trouble ahead.”

“Yes.” Muchami looks over. “Don’t get involved.”

“I don’t need your advice.”

Muchami, stung even though he should have expected this, falls silent.

The next morning, Sivakami draws him aside. “What’s this about the son-in-law’s business venture?”

“Yes, Amma. I didn’t think you’d like it, and haven’t told you about most of his business dealings since he arrived in Kulithalai. He has had a new one every few months. Who knew this one would be so successful?”

“Animal heads?”

Muchami shrugs, grinning a little.

Sivakami is quiet a moment. “I suppose there’s nothing wrong with him trying to supplement his income, though I wish he would live more quietly. All this flash!”

“Yes, Amma,” Muchami says.

Sivakami looks at him suspiciously and waits, but he says nothing more and she doesn’t ask.

It is two weeks before Navaratri, and Thangam comes in glowing. “Amma,” she tells her mother. “Look.”

Muchami is unloading boxes from the bullock cart, and Thangam opens them to show her mother: dolls, every size and style, perhaps two dozen of them.

“He brought them from Thiruchi!” Thangam picks each one up in turn, caressing it and setting it back in its wrapper.

Sivakami turns away from her, feeling discomfited. It is very strange. She knows Thangam loves dolls, but she’s looking at them as Sivakami feels she should her own babies.

Vairum comes in and sees the boxes. “What’s all this?”

“Dolls,” Thangam whispers. “For Navaratri.”

“You deserve to be spoiled, Akka, but surely he would be better off saving his money? Investing it in something safe?”

Thangam looks away.

“I can’t talk to him,” Vairum sighs. “Don’t know if anyone can. Can you?”

Thangam keeps her silence.

“I didn’t think so,” he says. “All this is going to blow up in his face.”

The end to Goli’s fast fortune arrives in a near-literal fulfillment of Vairum’s prediction. A rush shipment of four deer heads arrives within a month, but as he is taking the last out of its crate to hand it over to a customer, the animal’s forehead ruptures, one glass eye pops out, and maggots spill forth all over Goli, the customer and Goli’s veranda. The customer runs out screaming, and that’s the end of trade.

The customers from whom Goli accepted advance payment cancel their orders and demand refunds, and a number of people even try to return heads they had already bought and taken home, even though Goli assures them the maggot incident was an unfortunate but isolated chemical slip-up.

“I’ve been pushing the supplier too hard. They got hasty. If you will only be patient…”

He permits the others to cancel their orders but tells them that it may be some time before he receives a refund from the supplier.

Muchami believes Goli only ever paid on receipt of shipments, spending all the advance cash on frivolities and counting on future orders to pay for those already in. Vairum believes the same, but Muchami has been more laconic with him since the conversation about the devadasi and, apart from brief reports, has confined conversation to their own immediate business concerns.

Six months later, no one has received a refund. Goli has spent this time trying to convince those few remaining men who have not yet invested with him to back him in setting up a sesame oil refinery, but without success. A little jealousy may have entered their relations, and now, in the wake of his failure, a little schadenfreude. Goli’s odour of indebtedness also means his charm isn’t quite as effective as once it was.

Muchami hears things are getting rocky between Goli and his devadasi but withholds this information from Vairum, who doesn’t ask but assumes as much.

Thangam has started to shed again, copiously, and is starting to show: she is pregnant once more.

For some reason, Sivakami doesn’t dare tell Vairum about the pregnancy, but, one day, he notices.

“Ah, great,” he says, clasping his hands, glittering ill will from his diamond-black eyes as Thangam appears to shrink. “That’s just what you and your profligate husband need. Well, it doesn’t matter-you’ll pack another off to live with us. The boy is first in line, now, isn’t that right?”

“Vairum!” Sivakami says from the kitchen.

He leaves, with a dismissive gesture at his mother. Sivakami stands watching Thangam, who is curved around her stomach as though trying to make it disappear. Could that be the problem? Thangam is ashamed of her husband, ashamed of her children. Vairum should be ashamed of himself. She wonders if she should say something to him later. How can she, though, when he has been so generous toward his sister and her children, and wants children of his own so badly? Who can blame him for being a little resentful?

And now, Muchami tells Sivakami, “I understand the house is vacated.” Goli sold the furniture; all that remains are the few trunks of pots and saris with which they arrived. These will be sent along after him. Thangam will stay in Cholapatti through her delivery.

“It’s God’s will that they move on. I can’t question.”

Muchami nods.

“Are you feeling all right?” Sivakami quizzes him.

He tries to look a little more lively. He feels like he has spent two years putting out fires. It was wonderful having Thangam nearby, but he’s not sorry to see Goli go.

Sivakami’s feelings are even more mixed. She’s not sure it has even been beneficial to Saradha and Visalam to have their mother near: they seemed more confused than enriched, and always looked scared of their father. Muchami looks exhausted. She’s not sure why-surely the extra trips back and forth were not so great a strain? Vairum will certainly be more relaxed, and she will, too: she was always dreading the prospect of a confrontation between them.

But now the two years are over, and no harm done, she thinks with resolute cheer. Another grandchild on the way.

24. Two Ramayanas 1929

SIVAKAMI CONTINUES TO OBSERVE VAIRUM, without asking questions, which he does not welcome. Her tension about his professional prospects has ebbed with his increasing success. He not only managed their own lands very effectively, but purchased other parcels not thought to be productive and turned them around, quickly saving enough to buy a rice mill, whose output he has also increased, Muchami tells her, by 40 per cent. She has stopped worrying about him in this regard, but he still has no child, and it wears on him, especially as Thangam’s children continue steadily to fill their house.

Thangam has given birth to two more daughters. The manjakkani money has been put to ample use for Laddu’s poonal, and Saradha’s wedding, which was contracted four years prior, her first Deepavali and trips to her husband’s home, and her coming-of-age ceremony and departure last year. She married into a stable family in Thiruchi, distant relatives, and it is deeply satisfying to Sivakami to know she is so well settled. The relentlessly jolly Visalam has married but not yet gone to her husband’s house. Laddu is nine, a resolutely unambitious boy; Sivakami would be tearing her hair out if she had any. Vairum tutors him in math and science, and she has just hired a tutor in Sanskrit, but none of it seems to help. Sita, who came to stay late last year, is six years old and already has the black tongue of a harridan, a curse or insult always at the ready. Thangam’s first two children didn’t prepare Sivakami for the second two, and she prays daily for energy and cunning enough to raise them as she must.

It is to this that her thoughts always turn as she does her chores, as today, when she is slicing a turnip and muttering a mantra in worship of Rama. Rama Ramaya Namaha. Rama Ramaya Namaha…