Generally, home supplies are purchased on credit, the bill paid quarterly. Cash is used only for the daily purchase of vegetables from the market or passing vendors. Here, in the Karnatak country, the merchants have told Sita they will not give credit. She doesn’t understand and they will not explain. Is it because their father is not a local, because he’ll move on? But he’s been here a year and is posted here one year more, long enough, certainly, to have established a reputation.
Sita had pooh-poohed the merchants, rudely and with dignity. She bought supplies with the ten rupees Sivakami had slipped her; she had splurged, believing her father would want nothing but the best. She was right; he does want nothing but the best. But he clearly had forgotten to give her more money-poor man, she thinks, so much on his mind and now his household has doubled in size. She decided to remind him, show how willing and able she is to take over running the household.
While serving him his afternoon coffee, she asks, “Can I give the houseboy a shopping list, Appa? Will you give me money to give him?”
He looks at her as though he doesn’t know who she is and how she came to be in his house. “Money?”
“For groceries, Appa, we need some-”
“Management, management!” He raps his knuckles hard and humorously on her noggin. She winces. He winks. “What have I been keeping you at your grandmother’s for, if you still do not know how to manage money?”
“I…” She thinks she does know how to manage money, but she is probably wrong. That was Vairum’s house, an upside-down world, everything wrong. She needs to learn things again.
“Payday is Thursday.” She beams, but he is looking elsewhere. “Thursday I will bring home such food as you have never seen, squashes and cucumbers and sweets, yes?”
She happily claps her hands and retires to the kitchen.
The following evening, Janaki and Kamalam are sitting on the veranda. They forget the palanguzhi board between them when they see their father appear on the seat of a bullock cart. Radhai, who has been watching covetously, seizes a handful of cowries. Kamalam grabs her wrist but then releases it as Goli shouts, “Come! Come!”
Janaki and Kamalam’s instinct is to run into the house, which they do, with Radhai following, scared, on their heels, but Goli soon follows, still shouting, “Come! Come! Come!”
When the girls run into the house, looking like a startled school of fish, Sita guesses the reason and decants the coffee. Flushed with pleasure, she trots it out with two sweets, but Goli takes no notice.
“Come, I say!” he hollers, waving. “Into the cart! Where is your precious mother? Thangam! Thangam!”
Sita looks anxious and eager to obey but unsure of what action to take to do so. Goli blusters past her into the next room, then reappears and clarifies, “Into the cart!”
Moments later, they are all nested in damp straw, trundling up the road clinging to boards that threaten to pull away. Janaki whispers to Kamalam, “There is a cow pulling this cart.”
Goli hears and makes a grunting noise-“Huh?”-but has his nose pointed at the horizon.
Janaki whispers, “Cows are mothers, they give us everything. They must be worshipped, not made to work.”
Sita’s eyes narrow at them in a skilled imitation of her former self. “Hoi,” she instructs. “Stop telling secrets against Appa.”
Kamalam looks as though she’s been struck. Goli whips round in his seat, glaring. Janaki hisses at Sita, “We weren’t.”
The cart rolls on and Goli’s eyes roll reverentially back to his fantasies. Sita twists her mouth at her sisters. Goli leaps from his seat to the ground. He stumbles slightly and readjusts his dhoti. As the bullock cart jolts to a halt, Goli is already some distance away, gesturing to a building by the side of the road and asking, “Unh? Unh?” in a tone suggesting they should say what they think, and what they should think is that it’s great.
They all climb out cautiously, Sita holding the baby while Thangam dismounts. Goli has already run up to the building, evidently a recently defunct cinema. He turns as they trudge toward him, and whispers as if all the world is a stage, “Criminal, really. The price. Got it for a song-a filmi song! Can you sing one, kids?”
The kids can’t or don’t, but he’s not stopping.
“Lots of people going under these days. The stupid ones. Used to be you could get away with not being on the smarts. But not these days. These days it’s be smart or die. Kids, the sinking has started-and you are hitched to a swimmer.”
Thangam’s voice is both unbelieving and utterly without surprise. “You bought it?”
Goli beams at her and calls back as he starts running around the building, peering and banging and measuring things with the span of his hand. “Lock, stock and barrel. Me and several of my associates. Opportunity is knocking down our door. The ground floor suddenly lowered and why, we just got on.”
Thangam is whispering now, “I thought… it was a gamble…?”
Goli is in front of her in a flash, the pockets under his eyes pulsing. The humidity is giving Janaki a slight headache.
“You are repeating your brother’s words to me? He wanted me to work for him. For him!” Goli has begun chopping his right hand against his left palm.
Thangam speaks again, her eyes shut. “He wanted to be responsible-”
“No!”
The children step back in unison as the hot roar of refusal whips past them. Sita alone stands her ground and looks at her siblings triumphantly.
“He wanted to be my boss. No respect for me, me! His elder brother-in-law! Go and work for him… big shot…”
In the field before the cinema, they all privately recollect the scene between their father and uncle. One would guess from Sita’s smug face that in her version, Goli is the winner. In Janaki and Laddu’s memories, the victor’s identity is less certain. Kamalam recalls words but not meanings. She thinks she wants to go home, but she is not certain where that is, just now.
As uncomfortable as all of this is, they all appreciate Sita’s continuing good humour. The occasional lapse, such as that in the cart, reminds them of how good they have it now. That night, for example, Sita doesn’t give Janaki any lentils from the rasam. Since Janaki hates that bottom-of-the-pot sludge, Sita usually stirs it up and dumps it on double thick. But not tonight. Janaki ascribes this to Sita’s new-found mental peace. Then Sita eats-last, as she has taken it upon herself to do. Janaki sees her take the last of the rasam. It is nearly clear. There are almost no lentils in the broth.
Janaki presumes Sita forgot the lentils, a logical supposition given the quality of food Sita has been serving since their arrival.
The next morning, they eat pazhiah sadam, fermented rice with yogourt. (“Best thing for young tummies,” their grandmother always says.) But the buttermilk is watery and they are all hungry by mid-morning. When they come to Sita mock-whining that they want a snack, they expect her indulgence with milk sweets, since she’s been handing them out freely all week. Instead, Sita barks that if they’ve got nothing better to do than annoy her, why don’t they spend their time finding some fruit in the garden. The children drift out of the house, avoiding the two stunted, barren banana trees that stand at the end of the yard like more children their father forgot. Lunch is rice, lots of rice but with rasam even thinner than it was last night. For supper, the same. Kamalam asks for more and is given a big chunk of plain rice with a pickled baby mango from the jar Sivakami packed with their luggage. Thangam doesn’t eat, saying she’s not hungry. She drinks half a cup of nearly transparent buttermilk and goes to bed. Their father still has not arrived and Sita will not eat until after he does. Nine o’clock, ten o’clock, eleven o’clock pass, and Sita sits in the dark. She says she wants it dark so everyone else can sleep, but she wiped out the bottom of the lamp oil can with cotton wicks the night before. At eleven-thirty there is a loud knocking on the doors and Goli’s voice calls, “Thangam! Eh, Thangam!”