But wait, Amma never mixed the filter coffee decoction with milk till she had made the sweet. Semolina toasted a golden brown. Cooked in double the quantity of water, an equal portion of sugar, plenty of ghee and a hint of cardamom. Stirred till the grains glistened, separate and whole. Coloured with saffron. Garnished with raisins and roasted cashewnuts. They would sip the coffee, bite on the bhajis, sink their teeth into the richness of the sweet kesari and watch Appa as Amma piled his plate with double helpings he would leave untouched while the boys and Padma hungered for a wee bit more.

  Later the boys would run out to play under the mango tree and Amma would fetch the dice for a game. The dice that had been part of Amma’s dowry.

  The tinkle of the brass dice as it fell from their hands. The screech of the chalk on the slate as Padma practised her alphabets. The crackle of the radio that sang in the background. The hum of voices as they talked. Appa had this to sustain him through a whole week of anguish at the income-tax office.

  Later, when their lives fell apart, Akhila thought of those Sundays when Appa was alive as a time when nothing ever went wrong. And everything was the way it was meant to be.

  The day Appa died dawned as usual. Days later, Amma would claim that she had a certain foreboding. All night a lone dog had howled. She woke up to a twitching right eyelid. The milk curdled when she boiled it; the vessel with the dosa batter had slipped out of her hands and fallen to the floor, splashing it with a thick white rivulet of fermented fear. At the doorstep as she had bid farewell to Appa, she had seen a mangy cat cross his path …

  ‘I should have stopped him then. I should have read the signs that his life was in danger and kept him at home beside me. Instead I stood there and watched him walk away to his death,’ Amma wailed again and again to the women who huddled around her as she kept vigil at his cold rigid side.

  If the gods had thought it fit to warn Amma of the impending change in her destiny, they decided that Akhila needed no such signals. On the contrary, she woke up that morning to a quickening of her senses. An exhilaration that got her out of bed with a leap and had her rushing through the morning ablutions.

  Akhila usually hated morning. Now that she had finished her pre-university course, her parents considered her education complete and she was expected to fine-tune all her housekeeping abilities in preparation for the day she would be married.

  Amma insisted that she draw the kolam just outside the front doorstep every morning. ‘That’s how a home is judged,’ she never tired of telling Akhila. ‘Do you know what Thiruvalluvar said? A true wife is she whose virtues match her home.’

  Akhila sighed. The bearded and matted-haired poet-saint had tormented her school years with his prolific verses. The teacher who taught her class Tamil found it abominable that she faltered when asked to recite from memory Thiruvalluvar’s poetry while she was always word-perfect in the English recitations. ‘Who is this fellow Wordsworth? A pipsqueak if you compare his poetry to the immortal Thiruvalluvar’s. Does he teach you how to be a good wife or a mother? Do his words give you an insight into what is expected of a son or a pupil? And yet, you would rather memorize his verse. What was it you recited in the assembly the other day?’ He cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “‘Daffodils”, sir,’ Akhila mumbled.

  “‘Daffodils.” And what is that? Have you seen one? Do you think you’ll ever see one in your life?’ he sneered. ‘Can it match the fragrance of our jasmine or the colour of our marigolds?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Sit down. Don’t stand there like a great big bird,’ he said, leaning against the blackboard, quite overcome by emotion. ‘Tamil is the oldest living language but do we consider it important? We’d rather learn about daffodils and nightingales. I tell you, India might have got its independence but we are still slaves to the English language … Class, turn to page sixteen.’

  The spectre of Thiruvalluvar didn’t stop there. Every time Akhila got into a bus, there he was, seated on its side. Almost all buses that plied through the roads of Madras and its suburbs had a dark brown metal board mounted above the driver’s head with an illustration and a quote.

  Akhila’s Tamil teacher knew that she travelled by bus to school and devised new and unique ways of making her memorize at least a few hundred stanzas of everything Thiruvalluvar ever had to say. Every morning in the Tamil class, she was expected to recite aloud the verse that rode with her in the bus. The Tamil teacher didn’t care whether the stanza was about ideal passengers or drivers or journeys … as long as Thiruvalluvar had authored it. And now here he was. Dancing on the tip of Amma’s tongue, heaping coals and housewifely hints on her nineteen-year-old head.

  ‘A sloppily drawn kolam suggests that the woman of the house is careless, indifferent and incapable. And an elaborately drawn one indicates self-absorption, a lavish hand and an inability to put others’ needs before yours. Intricate and complicated kolams are something you reserve for special occasions. But your everyday kolam has to show that while you are thrifty, you are not mean. It should speak of your love for beauty and your eye for detail. A restraint, a certain elegance and most importantly, an understanding of your role in life. Your kolam should reflect who you are: a good housewife,’ Amma said in those first few days after Akhila had put aside her college textbooks for good.

  Amma had a scrapbook of kolam designs put together from the pages of the Tamil magazines she read. There was a kolam there to match every occasion conceivable in a brahmin household and a few more. Then there was a selection of everyday kolams. Good housewifely kolams brimming with all the housewifely virtues that made mothers-in-law refer to their daughters-in-law as the ‘guiding light of the family’.

  What to most households was a mere ritual was to Amma a science. And the everyday kolam that Akhila drew was a scientific experiment that she assessed every morning. First Akhila had to sweep the ground, then sprinkle water to settle the dust. Living in a town ensured that she didn’t have to mix cow-dung with the water. Then she took the bowl of coarse stone dust that Amma bought by the bag every month and set about creating a kolam. Eight dots in a row. Four on top and four beneath. When the dots were done, she circled them with interconnecting lines. When she had finished, Amma would come out and look at it. ‘Not bad, but next time see that the dots are equidistant and don’t break the lines between two dots. The trick is to let a steady stream of dust trickle out of your fingers. Now come and watch me while I do the inside kolam.’

  Amma did the kolam in the puja room herself And for that she used fine rice flour and the designs came out of the scrapbook of her memories. Akhila hated it. Akhila hated all kolams: the outer and inner ones. She hated this preparation, this waiting, and this not knowing what her real life would be like.

  But that morning, Akhila actually wanted to draw a beautiful kolam that would make Amma mouth rare words of praise. Akhila wanted to hear her say, ‘Akhilandeswari, that is a beautiful kolam befitting a good brahmin home.’ And Amma did. Perhaps that was the omen the gods sent Akhila’s way to tell her all was not right about that day.

  Later in the afternoon when Akhila had finished all the chores, she went to her mother who lay on the swing reading a magazine. ‘Amma, I’m going to Sarasa Mami’s house. She’s asked me to come and help her with some vadaam.’

  Amma looked up from the magazine and mumbled, ‘Isn’t it rather late in the day to begin making vadaam?’

  ‘Jaya and I are just going to clean the sago and soak it. Sarasa Mami said she’ll grind it and season the batter. So all I have to do is go there early in the morning before the sun gets too hot and help her pour tablespoons of it on to the cloth pieces. Oh, and Amma, she asked if you have any of Appa’s old dhotis lying around the house for her to use …’

  Amma sat up with a sigh. ‘Sarasa is a wily creature. For so many years I have asked her what she uses to season her vadaam and she’s never revealed all the ingredients. Maybe she’ll share it with you. Tell her that you’ll bring the old dhotis tomorrow and also tell her that I don’t want you standing in the sun. I don’t want you burnt black. You need to look after your complexion. All men want fair-skinned wives even if they are black as coal themselves!’

  That was Amma’s way of granting permission for her to step out. Padma and the boys had friends of their own in the same street. But Sarasa Mami lived two streets away. And each time, Akhila had to ask her mother if she could go visiting. According to Amma, the streets were fraught with all kinds of dangers that would rob her of her hymen before it was legally perforated by the man who would be her husband. Thereby bringing disgrace to her father, their family, and the whole brahmin community.

  Outside, the sun blazed. May was the hottest month in a year constituted of hot months and a few hot and wet months. The Kathiri star had been spotted and nobody in their right senses stepped out during the day. The heat scorched the scalp and parched the throat. Even at three o’clock in the afternoon, shadows remained knee-high. The leaves of the giant ficus tree at the end of the street shivered in the heat, bleached and grey. Dogs crouched beside culverts that ran on one side of the road. Mirages swam before one’s eyes in a matter of minutes. Akhila hurried towards Sarasa Mami’s house. She didn’t care about the heat or that the roads were deserted, but the neighbours did. If someone spotted her, they would find a way to point out to her mother the evils of letting a young girl like Akhila out in the streets by herself

  Sarasa Mami had a trunk full of books. Novels that her brother-in-law had bought during his college years and had no use for any more. It had lain there till one day she asked Akhila to help her clean the trunk. ‘Every few months I take it out, dust it, kill the silver fish that seem to breed within the pages and put it back,’ she said, opening the lid of the trunk. ‘I keep telling my brother-in-law that he must take it with him but each time he has a fresh excuse.’

  Akhila let her hand slide over the books. There were James Hadley Chases and Perry Masons; Harold Robbins and Irving Wallace and the odd classic or two. Dog-eared, yellowed with age and sweet-smelling racy books that made the blood hammer in her heart and unfurled forbidden thoughts. Sarasa Mami let her borrow one book at a time. ‘Are you sure your mother won’t disapprove of these books?’ she asked the first time.

  ‘They are not bad books. They just have covers like these to attract attention,’ Akhila hastened to explain before Sarasa Mami changed her mind about letting her borrow the books.

  ‘I suppose you are right. But if your mother makes a fuss, don’t tell her I gave it to you. She’ll give me hell.’

  ‘Sarasa Mami,’ Akhila called as she knocked at her door.

  Subramani Iyer’s face split into a wide grin. ‘Look who’s here,’ he said. It was rare to see him without a smile on his face. ‘All dressed up as a princess, I see.’

  Akhila looked down at her davani self-consciously. Her skirt and blouse were not new. But the purple-coloured georgette half-sari was almost new. No one but Subramani Iyer would have noticed it.

  Akhila knew no one quite like him. She had seen him saunter towards Sarasa Mami and fling his arms around her while she blushed and squirmed to escape from the circle of his embrace. He called her his queen and his children their treasure. Akhila had heard him weep large wet tears, moved by the tragedy of a film they had all gone together to watch at the cinema one afternoon. Every month on the day he was paid, he brought home a large box of sweets from the big sweet shop on Broadway — Ramakrishna Lunch Home. During Deepavali, he bought enough firecrackers to keep ten boys happy. He gifted them to Akhila’s brothers and then joined them at the street corner as they sparkled, whizzed and exploded the firecrackers, filling the air with smoke and the acrid stench of gun powder. All he asked was that every now and then they give blind Srini a lit sparkler to hold, so that he didn’t feel left out. ‘He can’t see but all his other senses are intact and probably work better than ours,’ Subramani Iyer would say, ruffling his son’s hair affectionately.

  His forehead was high and marked with a scar like a half moon right above the bridge of his nose. ‘Aren’t I lucky? Even if I have forgotten to smear vibuthi on my head, everyone thinks I have …’ He giggled, fingering the scar. His eyes popped out of his face, bearing in them a perennial expression of wonder. A child taken for the first time to a fairground.

  His clothes were always scruffy and hung on him as if they belonged to someone else. His shirtsleeves flapped and his trouser bottoms stood three inches above his ankles. He worked as a peon in an office where he had to fetch cups of tea and coffee, carry files from one table to another, empty the wastepaper bins and clean the office every morning, apart from doing an endless number of chores and yet, there was none of that aura of suffering that Appa with his superior clerical job wore around him.

  ‘He’s a happy-go-lucky sort of a chap,’ Akhila’s morose father was fond of saying. ‘Though how he can be with a grown-up daughter, a blind son and two young daughters, I wonder.’

  But when the ambulance came screeching down the road early in the evening, its shrill siren wailing, and when someone rushed to Sarasa Mami’s house with a message for Akhila to come home immediately, there had been an accident, it was Subramani Iyer who hurried out with her murmuring, ‘Don’t worry, it won’t be anything serious. Pattabhi Iyer is a good man. Nothing bad could ever happen to him.’

  Who were these people? Where did they come from? Why were they all here? Questions pounded as they hurried towards Akhila’s house. They were greeted by the sight of Akhila’s father’s balding scalp, a steady murmur of voices and Amma’s wails: How could this happen? How could he do this to me?

  Appa lay on a reed-mat on the floor. A white sheet was drawn up to the chin, beneath which his limbs were tidily arranged. His eyes were closed and there was cotton wool stuffed up his nose. He looked as though he were fast asleep. There was none of that harried exhaustion, the frustration and the bitterness that had marked his waking face. In death, he seemed completely content and relieved.

  ‘It happened just outside the station. At that turning between Central Station and Ripon Building … God knows what he was thinking of when he stepped on to the road. The bus driver claims that he had right of way … There will be an enquiry and all that. But I have some influence with the police department so they gave back the body an hour ago. They have performed a post-mortem so please don’t let the family hug and embrace the body too much. Everything was done in a hurry, you see, so the stitches might not hold too well …’ Someone from Appa’s office spoke quietly to Subramani Iyer. Akhila tried to fit a face to that voice but through the haze of tears all she could see was a miasma of features.

  Was he one of her father’s tormentors? Was he one of those they had learned to hate? Was he the man who caused their father so much anguish that he lost all ability to draw pleasure from any of their little triumphs?

  So that when Narayan or Akhila won a prize at school, the only way he knew how to respond was by sinking low into himself and sighing, ‘All this is well but will it help you in real life? What use is it getting a certificate for English recitation or for the best handwriting? They ought to give you lessons on how to hurt those who hurt you; on how to trample upon other people’s hopes; that will help you survive and not all this. I’m not saying I’m not happy …’ he would conclude and wipe his brow with a little gesture of weary defeat they had come to recognize so well as a prelude to a headache.

  That was the other thing about Appa. His headaches. It didn’t need much to set one off. A hot day. An overcast sky. A loudspeaker that blared forth Tamil devotional songs from the next street. The fragrance of incense sticks. A stomach upset. Padma’s chatter. Narsi scraping his knee on the street. A flickering light. A clattering plate. A howling dog. A motorbike revving up outside. A bad day at work. The crowded trains. A memory of some past hurt. A disquieting letter from a relative …

  They had learnt to shelter Appa from most things that gave him a headache but in spite of it, he often had an attack. And then Appa would retire to the dark inner room and slam the door shut. A couple of hours later, he would emerge reeking of Amrutanjan balm, his eyes crinkling in the light after having being in the dark so long. Even after a headache had vanished, he would open a jar of the balm, curl his forefinger into its innards and scoop out a dollop of slick yellow salve that reeked of lemongrass oil and rub it into his temples in a long drawn out movement, filling the house with its unmistakable and completely indelible stench. Then he would rub the remnants that clung to the finger against his thumb and sniff at it. Once. Twice. And a final drawn-in breath that perhaps would carry the sting of the balm to the inside of his skull. He finished off by wiping his fingers on his nostrils.

  And now Appa would never be troubled by a headache again. He lay there completely oblivious to the noise of strangers weeping, vehicles stopping and starting as fresh batches of people came in to condole and commiserate, the swirls of sickening sweet smoke from a whole packet of incense sticks lit and placed close to his ear … Appa was finally at peace.

  Amma lay curled up on the floor. A heap of lacerated emotions. When she saw Akhila, she rose. The women huddled by her side put their arms around her. One had to keep a close guard on a widow. Grief made even otherwise sensible people do rash and stupid things. Amma shook them off and raised her face to Akhila’s. ‘How could he do this to us? How could this happen to us?’

  Akhila looked at her helplessly. What was she to say? ‘Where are the children?’ she murmured, sitting down beside Amma.

  ‘They are somewhere around,’ she said, laying her head on Akhila’s shoulder. After a while, Akhila eased Amma’s head off her shoulder and went looking for her brothers and sister. Narsi and Padma were sitting on the veranda playing some complicated game involving vehicle licence plates. They seemed rather excited by all the commotion and the comings and goings. That their father was dead seemed not to have registered yet. Or, if it had, they were quite untouched by its implications. But then Narsi was only eight and Padma six.