A week later, Saradha arrives in preparation for the delivery of her first child. A woman normally goes to her mother’s house, to be looked after in the comfort of the home she has known, but Thangam is setting up house in yet another part of the presidency and is in no position to pamper Saradha as she deserves. In any case, Sivakami has come to be called Amma, “mother,” by the children, who refer to their mother as Akka, “big sister.” Sivakami is not sure when this started or whether she should do something about it, but it does reflect the children’s reality at least in part. So Saradha comes to her amma’s, at seven months, for her bangle ceremony, and now, to deliver.
The day arrives, and Sivakami sends Muchami to fetch the old women who deliver babies, but, when they arrive, she and Sivakami stop short at Saradha’s look of panic. “No, Amma!” she says, gripping Sivakami’s arm, which shocks Sivakami as much as anything. Even as a small child, Saradha never violated her grandmother’s madi.
“What is it, kannama?”
“You have to deliver my baby, Amma. You have kai raasi. Just like you delivered me and my brothers and sisters. You have to do it, Amma. Please, Amma!”
Kai raasi: lucky hands. Sivakami feels like Saradha has tied them. She is scared of her own inexperience, but superstition scares her more: after Thangam had her first, Sivakami would not turn the job over to anyone else, and now it appears she may have to do the same for her granddaughter. Now that Saradha has said the words, kai raasi, it would be bad luck to say no.
The old women hang back-they will not put themselves forward now even though they all feel they have kai raasi. Sivakami has only delivered seven babies, while they have delivered hundreds, but it’s true that Thangam’s babies all lived-thrived, in fact, despite their sickly mother and the uncertainty and strangeness of their vagrant early lives. Sivakami must once more perform her magic.
Any magician will tell you, though, that magic is nine-tenths labour and one-tenth luck. After nine hours of labour, Sivakami is praying for an hour of luck. She instructs Visalam to dribble some boiled rice water between Saradha’s dry lips. Saradha has permitted the old women to sop the sweat from her thick eyebrows, but only Sivakami is allowed to massage the spasming abdomen with sesame oil. Saradha’s forearms, as she bears down, squatting, are locked in Sivakami’s, and she will be persuaded to release them only because Sivakami needs her hands to catch the baby, whose head has finally, fuzzily, shown. The lucky hour has arrived.
A girl! She’s small but screams at a pitch that would be admirable in a child twice her size. Saradha, relieved, whispers, “Kai raasi, Amma. You should never deviate from tradition. You have always birthed the babies in this house.”
All the old women say as much and more to their families when escorted home that night. “Will she do the same for her son and daughter-in-law, do you think?” they whisper. “When?”
Sivakami is thinking the same thing. Vani has begun to do a daily puja for a dark-barked tree a furlong northwest of the house, on one of whose branches she has tied a pink ribbon, circling the tree nine times each morning. She has poured milk down every snake hole in the vicinity-Muchami would inform her whenever he spied one and she would journey out with one of Thangam’s children carrying the milk jug. (Presumably, if the snake didn’t drown in her generosity, it would be so grateful as to wish a child on her.) She has pledged a pair of little golden feet for the altar of the Krishna temple- Krishna is often worshipped in the form of a baby, chubby, sunny, mischievous-on condition of her pregnancy and safe delivery of a child.
Vairum never demonstrates blame toward his wife. Does he blame himself? He is a math genius and this is the simplest of equations: one plus one equals three.
And, daily, he is taunted by the evidence of his sister and brother-in-law’s proficiency in this regard. His actions, in the main, have been gracious toward his nieces and nephew. He is not by any means affectionate with them, but it is clear he will do whatever he can to ensure their current and future material well-being. For instance, tutoring Laddu. He says he is doing this for Thangam: he said he would never take from her but only give, and if he doesn’t offer this instruction, this boy will forever be a burden on his mother, causing Vairum indirectly to rob her. Having said that, the instruction does little to lessen this probability. Laddu attends his uncle’s tutorials out of fear, opening his school books and staring at them in bewilderment as Vairum prods and ridicules him for an hour and a half.
Laddu’s attitude toward his thrice-weekly Sanskrit tutorials is different. The first day his school chums attend, he does too, clearly intending that the time be spent in ribbing and chortling. This turns out to be more difficult than it is in school, where they have the cover of serious students, and because Laddu’s companions refuse to misbehave in the home of the most respected widow on their street.
Laddu does not appear for the next session and Sivakami sends Muchami out to track him down. He finds the boy lying within a rough circle of smooth, large stones, the remains of a Jain monastery abandoned eight hundred years earlier but still outlined in stone dots and dashes like a telegraph from history. For generations, this has been one of those places where boys go to smoke and brag, boys with and boys without promising futures. Muchami knows the place well; he was never interested in smoking or bragging, but he was interested in boys and so was a regular.
“What is this?” Muchami begins haranguing Laddu from five yards away, and the boy jumps up guiltily. “How is it possible that there are four boys learning Sanskrit in your uncle’s house and you are not one of them? Are those boys smarter than you, that they can find your house and you got lost in the forest? Maybe we should send you to school with a string tied around your waist and pull you home like a flapping fish when classes are over, shouldn’t we? Can’t you feel how your grandmother is suffering? She has brought all the knowledge of the village into your home and your portion is going to waste. She would give you everything, but she cannot afford to waste, not food, not clothes, not knowledge. It will rot there and smell bad and be thrown to the dogs in the street who will eat it and be fat and then maybe get sick, too! See how you are hurting your grandmother and all the creatures of the world by not following your dharma? Move! Back to the house! Look smart!”
Laddu doesn’t look smart at all but does move fast. The tutorial has already begun, young Kesavan reciting noun inflections in a mesmerizing singsong, and his glazed-looking students singing each phrase back at him, “Ramaha Ramow Ramaaha, Ramam Ramow Ramaaha…” Laddu starts singing along while still in the courtyard and bursts over the threshold, expecting to garner a laugh on his entrance. No one even looks at him, and he creeps to a place on the floor, farthest from the tutor.
So now there are four boys learning Sanskrit. Or…?
Sivakami, peeping in to check on the group’s progress, notices Muchami, sitting in one of the doorways to the garden, agape at the proceedings. No sounds issue from him, but his lips are moving and he is hanging on each syllable as though it contains the mysteries of birth, death and cinema. Seeing him sit so wholly absorbed in the vicarious act of learning, Sivakami recalls one of her earliest impressions of him, that he aspires to be something more than most of his class. She recalls her own hope that she might assist him in realizing this aspiration. She already has-he is, at forty-two, among the most highly respected members of his caste. But here is a skill none of them has, something even she does not possess and never will, because she hasn’t time nor would she consider it decorous. But now that Vairum has taken over much of the management of the property, and Sita has entered school, Muchami has more free time, and why shouldn’t he consider some self-improvement?