Sivakami is preoccupied and apprehensive, as much in anticipation of Goli’s arrival as of his potential failure to arrive. Vairum will be unpleasant in either circumstance. Sita, who idolizes their father loudly and frequently (though never in Vairum’s presence), is menacingly sweet today.
When Vani’s morning session ends, Janaki winds up her garland weaving and reports for her next task-making murrukku, fried lentil-flour snacks. It’s a chore the children compete for, and she has won the first shift. She takes up the tumbler portion of the murrukku-squeezing mechanism, selects a metal disk punched with star-shaped holes and drops it into the tumbler’s bottom to form a sieve. She scoops batter from the basin where Sivakami has prepared it, and fills the tumbler, then takes the compressor, double-handled like the tumbler, and fits its end into the tumbler’s top. Kamalam, too young for anything involving hot oil, squats in the doorway to watch.
Janaki holds the contraption over the bubbling oil and starts to squeeze, twirling it slightly to make the descending parallel lines loop as they hit the oil. The syllable “ka,” appears, floating in the pot.
“Look, Kamalam, I’m writing your name!” Janaki makes a “ma,” “ a ”la, ” “ ”and an “im,” ” which bubble and bob in and out of sequence, becoming “mamkala” and “lakamma” as Kamalam, who cannot read, bends open-mouthed above the wok. Janaki fishes the now solid syllables from the oil, and lays them on a plate in sequence, then pulls the tumbler from the compressor and refills it.
“Make Sita,” says Kamalam, drawing closer and then back on a warning from Sivakami. Janaki does: the syllables “see” and “thaa,” “ ”sink and rise, gold against the black iron.
Muchami peeks in from the courtyard where he is washing up, and Janaki writes him into the pot. “Mu,” “chaa,” “mi”-but of course he cannot read Tamil.
“This is the last one, what should it be?” Janaki asks, scraping up the last of the batter under Sivakami’s frugal eyes.
“Amma,” Kamalam suggests. Sivakami smiles and turns away, though she keeps looking as Janaki spells “ah,” “im,” “maa,”
Janaki and Kamalam wash up and, with Vani, are served their late-morning meal. Kamalam appears fascinated with Vani’s stories, though Janaki is not convinced her sister is really following them. Today’s was particularly worth missing school for: the story of Vani’s father’s second cousin who was kidnapped by a renegade band of dacoits and made to serve them for twelve years as a laundryman and spiritual adviser. His thumbs were cut off so that he could not use their stolen muskets against them, and when he was returned home, he was never again permitted in the family’s sanctum sanctorum because clearly he had not prepared his own food in that time and indeed had taken up with a concubine, who not only cooked for him but fed him from her own hand.
After the morning meal, the household naps. After tiffin, while Sita makes murrukku with unusual willingness but no attention at all to shape or symmetry, Janaki is excused to listen to Vani play.
She slips out the back, swings herself up against the mango tree, bracing her toes into near invisible notches on the trunk and standing, then sitting, on a branch about eight feet off the ground. She mastered this about a week ago, practising one Sunday morning when Bharati was not around.
Bharati arrives soon after and climbs up as well. Janaki has taken the better branch-slightly wider and higher up. Bharati takes the second choice-lower and narrower. From above and to their right, Vani commences playing “Akshayalinga Sankarabaranam,” a song for Shiva.
Janaki and Bharati begin to tap out the rhythm-they have just recently deciphered it. It seems to be three and a half beats: a short and a long tap on the back of the hand, two long taps on the front.
And they are humming along. Occasionally, Bharati and Janaki find themselves humming different things, each anticipating a different turn in the song, just as happens with Vani’s stories. But, increasingly, they find that even when they hum different things, neither sounds wrong, because they are both improvising on the raga, though neither will learn its name and formal properties for some years. And they don’t sound bad together. So there they are, tapping and humming, their two pairs of feet dangling from the foliage. They can’t see the back door from the courtyard and so don’t see it open and Sita step out, hot and cranky from completing the coveted chore, blinking oil-smoke tears. She hears the two to her left, though she can’t see them. She says, “Oh, you two songbirds fill our neighbourhood with beauty. We’re so lucky! You must promise me, Bharati, that you will sing at my wedding. And Janaki, you must sing at my funeral. Promise?”
“Sita!” Sivakami’s voice comes from the courtyard. Sita wheels and whacks her elbow on the heavy wood door. “Not one more word like that!”
The songbirds stop their twittering. Sita slinks back inside like a mean pet cat in a family of dog lovers.
It is shortly after midnight by the time the preparations are complete. The moon has waxed full and burns candle-bright, so Vani does, too. Janaki listens to the last strains of Vani’s practice as she washes her face and hands, and Kamalam’s, in the moonlight by the well.
Vairum steps off the stairs into the main hall as Janaki and Kamalam lay down their sleeping mats. He speaks to Sivakami with a roughness that has increased with the years.
“Still hasn’t appeared?” It’s not a question. “What will we do if he hasn’t come by morning?”
Sivakami sighs. “We go ahead, even without him. We can use a stand-in, if necessary.”
“Makes sense. He uses a stand-in for every other function of fatherhood-except the original one, pardon me.”
Everyone else likes to sleep in the darker areas of the hall, but Janaki places her reed mat over a cold, striped mat of moonlight. Cold, milky moonlight pours in the window and runs over her face, along the grooves between her nostrils and cheek, collects in her collarbone, between her lips, in her cupped palm and the clench of her fist, and chills her finally to sleep.
The next day, the inauspicious period of raahu kaalam doesn’t end until 10:30, so everyone has plenty of time to rise and bathe and grow hungry-none will be permitted to eat cooked food until after the puja. Thangam and the baby take their first bath since the birth and Thangam applies turmeric paste to her skin. It makes an ordinary woman appear golden, but on Thangam’s arms and countenance it has a dulling effect. The baby is gently massaged with sesame oil, with special attention to shaping the features of his face.
From today, he will be called Krishnan, since he is the eighth child and a boy, just like the hero-child of myth. The name certainly fits, coo his sisters: just see his lusty yells, his kicking and writhing, his handsome face. He has all the strength and charm and mischief of the god. Clearly, he is more than equal to multi-headed sea serpents and poison-nippled wet nurses. Without doubt, he could steal butter and charm any village lady into forgiving him.
But just in case-and especially if all the admiration to which he will be subjected makes him vulnerable to the evil eye-baby Krishnan will receive today a black cord to be tied below his belly. On the cord, among a few other tiny trinkets, will hang a cup containing a snippet of his umbilical cord, and a bit of Laddu’s, the older brother who lived, sealed in with gold. Sivakami stubbornly overrode suggestions that the cup include a pinch of Thangam’s gold dust. She can’t believe that others persist in seeing Thangam’s dust as auspicious: to her it seems quite clear that Thangam sheds when she is at her lowest, that in some way, the dust is her essence, her promise, her vitality draining from her. It’s no wonder it has healing properties-she has no doubt about that-but it is not indicative of fulfillment or joy.