Sivakami smiles, looking wan. “Good girl. Maybe you can be ready to leave day after tomorrow?”
It’s a pleasant nine-hour journey northwest. Janaki has brought a slate, to pass the time, and gives Muchami a few Sanskrit lessons. He is too shy to work aloud in so public a setting, but she writes out lines for him to copy. He has continued to sit in on Janaki’s Sanskrit tutorials, though young Kesavan practically ignores him. Once in a while, though, Janaki, in a didactic mood, will take it upon herself to quiz Muchami on the basics. He has grasped these, though his pronunciation continues to be atrocious and Janaki doesn’t try to hide her impatience as she corrects him.
When they are done with Sanskrit, they watch the landscape shift outside the barred windows of the train. The greens and browns of the Kaveri delta give way to pinkish rocks and sparser settlements as they climb into the hills. It’s the monsoon season, and the air smells of rain. Twice, they ride through cloudbursts.
They chat, but not much. There is a distance between them now, which both feel it proper to observe. Janaki is glad for it, because it indicates the difference in their stations-she is growing up and happily anticipating the small powers that will fall to her as a matron. Muchami, for his part, still feels the weight of the child she was on his hip. If she tends to boss him, if she is short with him over his Sanskrit, he indulges her. She is still his favourite and he is proud of her.
Once in the town, Muchami, carrying her bag, hurries ahead and drops behind, inquiring repeatedly. They find the house. Two-year-old Raghavan gallops out of the house. When they stoop to caress him, he whinnies and ducks and continues past them, into the neighbour’s house. The neighbour emerges carrying him. She is a tall, thin woman with severe looks. Tics in either side of her face pull her mouth down in clownish grimaces. Raghavan seems to think she is making faces to amuse him, and to Janaki’s mortification, imitates her and laughs, clapping his hands.
Thangam leans in the doorway and smiles at them, a smile below which stretch two cords in her neck, like the pillars of a suspension bridge. She is as grey as ash, and as incorporeal.
Muchami says, “Thangam? Are you well?” But Thangam just stands back silently to let Janaki enter the small dwelling. Janaki moves toward her mother to kiss her, but Thangam makes no similar move and her initiative fades. She puts her bag in a corner while Thangam makes coffee for Muchami, who squats at the front stoop.
They are living in a house with the well in the middle of the main hall, under an open skylight. Raghavan runs around the well, flings himself gaily against the walls, pulls saris and braids. Once he stops and walks delicately to a shrouded pile. He pats it gently, saying, “Amma. Ga’phone. Amma! Ga’phone.” She smiles, goes to the mound and unveils the gramophone.
Raghavan sits and watches the turntable with the intensity of the little dog on the label waiting for his master’s voice, while Thangam takes four records, one by one, from a high shelf. She fits the needle into the gramophone’s arm and the key into the body and winds. Janaki and the neighbour sit, while Muchami moves into the front doorway. First they hear a loud scratchiness, then a single veena as though heard over a river’s rush. It’s “Sami Varnam,” the same recording they heard when Goli first gave Thangam the machine.
Thangam plucks the disc from its bed, sheathes it and takes out another. The new record also rushes and shushes, riverine-but it is a vocalist this time, not a veena player. The singer is very young. Janaki has never heard Bharati sing, but she finds herself imagining her friend at home, in that pretty hut with no neighbours, plaiting her hair after her oil bath, kohling her eyes dreamily in a fragment of mirror, singing through barely parted lips.
They all know the song: “Balagopala Palaya Mam,” a devotional song for Lord Krishna, composed by Dikshitr, one of the immortals of south Indian classical music. Janaki sings along, and even the severe-looking neighbour joins in. Thangam leans against a pillar with her eyes closed. Little Raghavan claps his chubby hands and occasionally cuffs one of them in delight.
But Thangam forgot to rewind the machine, and when the song is nearly at its end, the disc begins to slow. Seventy-eight rpm becomes sixty-five, fifty, thirty-five. Raghavan stops mid-clap to listen to this dying groan. Janaki giggles at the funny sound, at the expression on the little boy’s face. Seeing her laugh, he begins laughing also.
Thangam opens her eyes, pulls out a third disc and slips it on the turntable, not forgetting to crank this time. She looks at her children and visitor with a sly expression, one that might almost be mischief. Janaki stops laughing in amazement, but many people are still laughing, more than are present: from the phonograph issues a river of giggling, chortling, guffawing and twittering, the laughter of a large number of people of all ages and sexes that, in ensemble, creates the cadences of a familiar, elementary tune, “Vara Veena.”
It is a novelty record, a fashion item: music of laughter. Minister probably has a copy; he rarely misses a fad.
Raghavan doubles over, laughing louder and harder. At this, at him, Janaki starts laughing again; the neighbour joins in, and even Muchami, at the door. Thangam smiles, her eyes closed again, looking almost peaceful.
Oh, thinks Janaki, as she lies that night with her baby brother sleeping in her arms and the first monsoon rains thrumming through the skylight, why could not every day of our lives have been like this?
Janaki sets to work the next day, getting them ready to move. Muchami, seeing that there are no servants here, is arranging to transport their belongings to the new home, while Janaki, Thangam and the baby will take the train.
Not much has been packed yet but there is not much to pack. Still, progress is very slow at first because each item Janaki puts in a bag or trunk, her little brother takes out again. So instead she sets the things down beside the luggage and tells him to leave them there. He mischievously packs them one by one. In this way, things get done.
Janaki is shocked at how few furnishings there are and asks if some items have not gone ahead with her father. Thangam shakes her head. Janaki shrugs and continues to make arrangements, knowing her mother must have had more copper pots than this-there are gaps in the usual size sequence. She’s sure they had more in the Karnatak country. And only one silver plate-unheard of. She admits to herself what is clear: her father must have pawned the pots and plates over the years.
The transfer of goods and persons to the village of Munnur is completed without incident. Munnur is to the east, a few hours closer to Cholapatti, back on the Kaveri. Muchami, after delivering them, takes his leave. When Janaki sees him off on the veranda of their new home, even more modest than the last, he inclines toward her and speaks in a low voice. “Janaki, your grandmother gave you a little money, yes?” Janaki confirms it.
“Keep that safe,” he instructs, sounding reassuring, no longer the servant, but Sivakami’s representative. “It’s for an emergency. You never know what might happen. And you know how to contact us, if you need to? To send a letter?”
“Yes, of course,” Janaki says-she’s fourteen, practically an adult!-but also scared at the degree of responsibility this conference implies.
“All right,” Muchami says, his brow furrowed. He’s reluctant to leave.
“It’s okay, Muchami.” Janaki looks brave. “We’ll be fine.”
He looks at the ground. “You’re a good girl, Janaki, a strong girl, smart girl. I know you will take good care of little Thangam. Poor Thangam.”
Janaki is slightly offended that Muchami sees her mother-and probably her father-just as she does. But she cannot sustain this feeling; she is still too much the little girl she was.