The sun was sinking low and Sappani knew that soon the bell would ring to signal time to eat. If he wasn’t quick, Seyan would have to go without the daily ration of dhal and rice. Shifting the sleeping child to his other shoulder, he approached the hospital shed.

  ‘Can I see her, please? The boy needs his mother,’ he said to the nurse, who knew by now who he was.

  ‘She’s sick, and she could make you sick as well, and you have a baby to think of too,’ the nurse replied and turned her back to him as she continued to roll a pile of bandages.

  Sappani stood there as if he hadn’t understood a word she’d said. Perhaps realising that she’d been a bit harsh, the nurse added, ‘This is the best place for her.’ She walked in through the curtains.

  Outside, Sappani waited until Seyan screamed to be fed.

  The next day, Sappani resumed his position outside the hospital shed. The doctor emerged, his grave face confirming Sappani’s fears. ‘Your wife is not getting better,’ he said flatly. ‘We tried but now she has dysentery too. It may be too late.’

  ‘But there must be something …?’ Sappani pleaded.

  ‘She should have been brought here straight away. Others could also get sick,’ the doctor chided. ‘We could have quarantined her and kept this from spreading.’

  Sappani stared at him, dejected. He knew that whatever he said would make no difference.

  Chinmah, just fourteen years old and already showing the telltale bump of a baby on the way, had heard the women talking about Sappani. She had seen the father carrying his son, waiting in the courtyard for news of his wife. That afternoon, she offered to play with the child while Sappani took the chance to have a wash and check if there was news about Neela.

  Rubbing her hands over her own swollen belly, she hoped that her husband Ramsamy would in time pay some attention to her condition, and the fact that they would soon have a baby of their own. So far, he hadn’t shown any interest, or any emotion one way or another.

  Her husband was almost twice her age. Her poverty-stricken parents had seen fit to marry her off to him, even though he was considered somewhat odd by the villagers. Chinmah’s father, a toddy tapper, had had an accident a year before that had plunged the entire family into poverty. He’d been up a coconut tree when a snake had scared him, and he’d lost his grip and fallen to the ground. He was now an invalid, unable to move the lower half of his body.

  Ramsamy, a skinny man who lived in their village, was aloof and spoke to nobody. His mother had become desperate after his younger brothers were married, and still Ramsamy showed no interest in finding a bride, even at the age of twenty-six.

  Then the arkati recruiter had arrived in the village and told them about the promised land. Ramsamy had become obsessed, pleading with his mother to allow him to go. He’d return after five years, he promised, with plenty of money in his pocket.

  His mother, who knew her son only too well, was unconvinced. As it was, his family couldn’t rely on him to provide for them – he would often be seen near the river, wandering about in a dreamlike state. ‘Who will take care of you there?’ she asked him.

  ‘I will find a wife there,’ he said.

  But his mother had a better idea: she would give him her blessing to leave, she said, if he agreed to be married first. Secretly, she’d thought that once he got married, he might give up the idea of emigrating and would settle down to life in the village.

  The tiny dowry they’d offered for Chinmah – three chickens, three saris and a little money – couldn’t be refused by people who had nothing. She’d been married to him a week later, seeing him for the first time as they circled the hawan, the fire prepared especially for the marriage rituals.

  Later, with the sounds of the wedding guests still rising into the dark sky outside, Ramsamy had crawled on top of her, ignoring her screams. After that first night, Chinmah did not scream again. She realised that this nighttime assault was something that, as a wife, she had to accept.

  The doctor announced that Neela’s condition had worsened overnight.

  Feeling useless and frustrated, Sappani left Seyan asleep on Chinmah’s lap. He walked to the fence that ran around the camp. The street wallahs sold all manner of things and Sappani decided on a few sticky, plump gulab jamuns – some for Seyan and some for Chinmah who he thought would enjoy something sweet. He remembered how much Neela had enjoyed them when she was pregnant with Seyan.

  He was on his way back when he saw the nurse scanning the yard, looking for someone. Terror gripping him, he increased his pace, but Chinmah appeared in front of him, the baby clutched to her chest and her mouth set in fierce determination.

  ‘She is gone, bhai,’ she said.

  Seyan reached out for his father but Sappani didn’t move his arms from his sides. The gulab jamuns fell from his numb hand. His knees quivered and he flailed briefly before he fell to the ground.

  Chinmah tried to help him up as Seyan screamed for his father but Sappani had slipped into another world and began to wail and beat his chest. The baby cried louder and Chinmah struggled to keep her balance and hold the boy.

  Other women and men helped Sappani to his feet and led him to a place where he could sit. He watched, slack-jawed, as flies with iridescent wings and metallic bodies covered the sticky gulab jamuns and began to gorge themselves.

  The nurse approached Sappani and this time she was softer, kinder. ‘We gave her treatment but she was too sick already. She held on for as long she could. I am sorry.’

  ‘Was she in pain?’ Sappani whispered, his mouth as dry as dust.

  ‘No, she was not. She was at peace and pain-free until the end.’

  The nurse turned and moved away.

  Sappani tried to follow. ‘I am sorry, you can’t. The dysentery is very contagious so no one can view the body. We will do the cremation in the funeral ghat in the morning.’

  In the yard it seemed like even the breeze had paused. There was an unnatural calm, the heat rising from the ground in lazy coils, with only the calling of the street wallahs and the occasional child’s cry to be heard. A slow trickle of people gathered around Sappani, who had slipped from his seated position and lay once again in the dirt. Some watched in silence as he wept. Others, mostly women, lifted the edges of their pallu and wiped their tears away and moved on.

  Sappani wept for Neela, from a place that he did not even know he had. His guilt held him in a vice: he was to blame for taking her away from the village; it had been his idea, and this seemed like a punishment for defying his circumstances. A waterfall of regret cascaded over his grief.

  His anguish was powerful and all-consuming. As Neela’s frail body grew stiff a few yards away, her husband’s tears sprang from new wells.

  Sappani lost track of how long he lay in the dust in exactly the same spot. His mind had no single coherent thought.

  Meanwhile, Chinmah did her best to keep the child quiet, but he was inconsolable.

  With the dawn came the dread of what this new day would bring. Sappani walked to the fence and looked out at the Indian Ocean, his fingers gripping the mesh tightly, as if it were the only thing holding him upright.

  The sun glimmered like a newly lit fire above the Bay of Bengal and a dreamy orange glow touched the silken waves. It lulled his soul briefly, before bringing the realisation that Neela was going to be cremated on a funeral pyre today.

  Sappani scanned the bay for rising smoke from the funeral ghats along the shoreline. He had to say goodbye to her.

  Leaving the camp was a risk, but one he was willing to take. If he was caught he could be denied re-entry to the camp and sent on his way. But the soldiers who’d been on night patrol were usually sleepy at this time of the morning and less likely to notice movement among their charges. Sappani took advantage of a delivery of goods at the gates, slipping out under cover of the noise and confusion as boxes and bags of supplies were being hauled in.

  Along the cut-out steps of the ghats on the river bank, the burning pits were already alight. The reflection of the flames danced on the murky water that washed in from the sea. Here, the water, thick with ash, was reduced to a grey sludge, as if the sea itself was refusing the offer of the dead. Columns of smoke the same grey as the water hung in the air. The acrid smell burnt Sappani’s nostrils and the heat of the flames brought him out in a sweat.

  He made enquiries about any bodies coming from the coolie camp and was told that the doms, a low caste whose job was to perform the last rites and cremate the dead, had yet to fetch them. Sappani waited, crouched on his haunches some distance away, watching the doms who, wearing only dhotis, tended to the dead.

  The sun was directly overhead when one of the doms called for Sappani. The body-burner removed the cloth covering a lifeless form on a bamboo bier. Sappani gasped and reached out to touch his dead wife, but his hand was quickly caught by the dom to prevent the forbidden contact. Tears streamed down Sappani’s cheeks as he took in Neela’s face: thinner, her cheeks sunken, her dark hair making her complexion look as if it was made of wax.

  The doms hoisted the bier onto their shoulders and walked out into the sea until the water lapped around their waists. Briefly, they immersed Neela’s body before carrying her back to the shore and laying the bier on the cut-out stairs to dry while they made some final checks on the funeral pyre itself.

  Large piles of logs were arranged at the edge of the ghats. They were different prices, and Sappani knew that it would be the cheaper mango-wood logs that would have been secured by the authorities for Neela’s pyre. He had nothing to offer the doms to buy the more expensive sandalwood logs, which burnt quicker.

  Sappani pleaded with the doms, who finally relented and let him help them. They mumbled orders, telling Sappani how many logs he would need, and how to stack them to ensure that the body would burn fully so that moksha would be completed. One of the doms offered Sappani a pot of ghee, showing him how to liberally spread it over the logs beneath the bier to keep the fire burning.

  The doms chanted in unison as they lowered the bier with Neela’s body onto the raised platform of logs, her feet facing south, in the direction of the realm of Yama, the god of death. A dom handed Sappani a flaming kusha twig to set the body alight, so that Neela’s soul could be offered up to Agni, the god of fire. Once the body was ablaze, the doms dragged heavier logs over it, so that the corpse would not sit upright when the heat caused the muscles to contract.

  Raging now, the fire hissed and smouldered, fuelled by the ghee and fanned by the wind. It grew. Crackling and bursting, the flames received the offering, purifying the soul and freeing it from the body.

  A cow edged closer and slowly settled next to the fire.

  Sappani watched as its head lolled, its ears twitching occasionally. It ate a few marigolds that had been left behind by mourners carrying out last rites, tucked its hooves beneath its body, and closed its eyes in blissful sleep.

  The smell of burning ghee now mingled with the sandalwood powder that the doms had scattered over the pyre to disguise the smell of burning hair. Her hair, her beautiful hair! Sappani choked at the thought and a fresh bludgeon of despair hit him. His pain left no room for anything else; like the fire, it was all-consuming.

  Nearby, a group of holy men began their prayers at the water’s edge. They sang bhajans, mournful songs about grief and loss, and the sound wrapped around Sappani like a blanket. Grey tendrils of incense and the rhythmic chanting from the holy men rose, dancing within the coils of smoke.

  The doms sat on their haunches and idly poked at the pyre, as if cooking a meal over it. They lit and tended to other pyres, and Sappani waited through the day, watching the sun track across the sky, occasionally looking up to the camp, wondering if his absence had been noted. His hope was that the bureaucracy required to move him from the family section into the men’s quarters would temporarily disguise his absence. Chinmah had insisted that she keep Seyan with her – the men’s quarters was no place for a child, she’d said. Sappani was pleased that Seyan wasn’t with him, and hoped that the child was in a deep sleep with dreams of his mother.

  Later, the doms shared their meagre food with Sappani, then let him sleep, promising to wake him when it was time.

  Sappani’s grief was so sharp that he’d thought he would never sleep again, but instead his exhaustion dragged him into darkness, despite the fact that he was curled up directly on the filthy river bank. He woke the next morning with a dom poking him with a stick.

  Placing both palms together and tipping his head, Sappani thanked the doms and took the clay urn containing Neela’s ashes. He waded out into the bay with it held high above his head. The cool water lapped around his legs and then his waist. For a moment he thought about dipping his head below the waves and being done with it all but Neela’s concern haunted him: ‘What about Seyan?’

  Without any ceremony, he turned the urn over and emptied his wife’s ashes into the water. He watched them float on the surface for a while, hovering, uncertain. Then he turned and waded back to the shore.

  Sappani watched the gates of the camp from a distance. A breeze skittered across the camp, stirring the stench of the depot, where the contents of the latrines flowed through an open sewer.

  Sappani crept closer. It was time for the morning meal, and a few women were gathered near the gate, buying coconuts and betelnut from the street wallahs who carefully kept their distance, stretching their hands out to exchange their goods for rupees. Sappani stepped forward casually, thinking this was a good chance to slip in.

  ‘Where do you think you are going, hah?’ bellowed an Indian soldier. His uniform was clean and new, which meant that he was probably still taking his job seriously.

  Sappani froze, his mind frantically trying to think of a response. He opened his mouth and closed it again.

  ‘You pugla! You know you are not allowed outside the camp gates!’ a young woman said, taking his arm. Clicking her tongue in irritation, she scolded him, ‘You are lucky you have taken just one step. If you had crossed the road, you would have been in real trouble.’ Rolling her eyes in exaggerated exasperation, she addressed the soldier. ‘Sir, forgive my husband. He doesn’t listen.’

  Sappani stared at the woman. She looked to be about twenty years old, with large, luminous eyes and a light complexion. Her English was flawless.

  Her outburst had created a scene and several people slowed down to watch. The soldier looked at the two of them, mildly amused, and turned to Sappani. ‘Looks like you will get into more trouble with her than me.’

  Holding him tightly by the elbow and frogmarching him away, the woman whispered, ‘I’m Vottie. Just walk with me,’ then, loudly, she added, ‘I can’t trust you to do anything on your own!’

  Struck dumb, Sappani allowed the woman to lead him away, grumbling about how he was indeed the good-for-nothing her appah had warned her about.

  Losing interest, the soldier instructed the crowd to move along, while Vottie steered Sappani around a corner of a tent, where she finally loosened her iron grip on his arm. ‘I will let Chinmah know you are back,’ she said. ‘We were getting worried about you, for Seyan’s sake.’

  ‘Thank you,’ was all Sappani could manage.

  Over the next few days, Sappani felt restless. He had insisted on taking Seyan back with him to the men’s quarters, but the men did not want the crying child there. Most nights, Sappani would pace the camp, the restless and often whimpering child in his arms.

  Sappani could see that during the day, when Seyan was with Vottie and Chinmah, the little boy was settled and at ease. Chinmah, who seemed to be barely more than a child herself, had a wonderful connection with the baby, probably because she was soon going to be a mother.

  With each passing day, Sappani doubted more and more that he could raise his child on his own. He thought about returning home, going back to his father and begging for forgiveness. As the only son, it had been his responsibility to look after his parents but he had made the decision to leave, promising to send them money as soon as he could. His father had especially not wanted Neela and Seyan to leave – he had doted on the boy.

  Sappani recalled, with a painful knot in his stomach, how, on the morning of their departure, he had knelt and touched his father’s feet with each hand, waiting for his blessing. But his father had stared blankly ahead and not said a word.

  Sappani shook his head as if to dislodge the idea: he could not, anyway, return to his village without his wife, where it would be clear to everyone that her death was his fault. More than ever now, he needed to get on that ship, but his chances were much reduced without someone who would be a mother to Seyan. When they reached their destination, he would not be able to care for such a young child and work on a plantation too.

  Sappani was sitting with his back against a small, crooked tree in the dusty centre of the camp when Babuji, one of the arkatis, came to sit alongside him. From neighbouring districts, they both spoke Tamil and English.

  ‘When do you think we will go, then?’ Sappani asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the arkati said, sounding annoyed, and offered Sappani some of the paan he was rolling. Sappani declined. ‘Every time I think maybe today I’ve done enough, they tell me the number of Indians is still not enough.’

  Babuji’s irritation was partly because, despite getting all the recruits safely to the Madras camp, he would only be paid for those who made it onto the ship.

  During his nightly walks with Seyan, Sappani had seen Babuji bringing women into the camp. Their stories were as commonplace as rice: they had brought disgrace on their households so their families had disowned them – concubines, widows who had stood to inherit their husbands’ land but who had been turned out by their families so that they could be rich instead, women with serious illnesses.