“Well.” Mr. Kandasamy mopped his brow, looking earnest and purposeful. “We know that the charity’s finances are thoroughly separate from those of the family. And we have kept them strictly and, more importantly, provably so. However, I do think it my responsibility to warn Sir of possible vulnerability to others who are adept at and interested in manipulation. This is my suggestion: you must house your personal assets in what is known as a ‘tax shelter.’ Have you heard this term?” Mr. Kandasamy looked suddenly a few inches taller, Baskaran reported to Janaki with a giggle, and as though he had more hair.
“No, no, no, no.” Dhoraisamy looked to his son, who also shrugged.
“Permit me to be direct.” Mr. Kandasamy smiled with greater assurance than usual. “Your greatest assets are your own sons, are they not? One thinks it could be wise to house them… in houses. Of their own.”
Baskaran and his father made faces demonstrating shock and reluctant receptiveness. Mr. Kandasamy plowed on. “Give them their share of their personal inheritances and pretend-if only on the books, more than this you need not do except to revenue inspectors and their relatives-you no longer care for them. It is the one way to ensure Sir operates at a loss.”
Mr. Kandasamy, who, Baskaran later remarks, has a surprising flair for drama, allows a decorous silence, within which the mood alters and settles. “I know it must seem a heartless and scandalous notion,” he goes on, “not to keep one’s children and grandchildren under one’s own roof, but many respectable families are considering this, and naturally I would… ahem, one would never suggest that Sir’s sons go further than Single Street.” Finally, Mr. Kandasamy draws a breath to conclude his speech. “The charitable institution was established to propagate the values and good name of our caste. It is my duty to guard against any threat to the institution and its values. I urge Sir to take this suggestion. Avoid any whiff of caste betrayal. Long live the Brahmins!”
Janaki is quite sure Mr. Kandasamy did this because the charity’s finances are not nearly so separate from the household’s as they should be, and he would be out of a job if the charity’s foundation were eaten through. Whether this is a philosophical end gained by practical means, though, or a practical end gained by philosophical means, the results are the same.
The household returns to its former deceptive and uneasy peace. Still, Janaki continues her work, leading Sanskrit tutorials with the paadasaalai students. She has always kept busy, and work is reassuring, especially in times of change.
OTHER CHANGES ARE IMMINENT, too, but these are expected and non-threatening. Janaki, who has always perceived more than she could understand, now embodies changes she cannot control. She has intense cravings for foods that, once she has eaten them, she never wants to see or smell again. She takes long naps and has fits of crying. With joy, relief and fearful apprehension, she watches two months pass without menstruating. The estimate is that she and Baskaran will become parents in summer of 1945, and she imagines herself going to Cholapatti for a visit and returning to Pandiyoor with a child.
Now, when she’s in the women’s room, she is making items for her own child’s layette. Senior Mami has a radio; Janaki turns it on and off for her and listens to programs on current affairs and spiritual matters while doing her handiwork. She practises veena at least three or four times weekly, which is what she is doing when the telegram comes.
A paadasaalai boy peeps around the corner of the doorway to the women’s room; they ignore him. He gradually edges over so that more than half of him is visible along the doorway’s edge. Still, he is ignored. He is evidently here with a message-giving the boys small chores, everyone says patronizingly, is a way of making the pupils feel included in the family.
The boy, a jug-headed child of six with attention problems, starts to fidget and rustle, but Janaki doesn’t notice, over the music. Finally, Swarna sits up and takes the envelope out of the tyke’s hand. Senior Mami, noting the end of the standoff, immediately says, “Here.” But the sisters-in-law, lest anyone forget that they are burrs and must be plucked, and because it amuses them, have kept up their habit of disobeying their mother-in-law. Thus Swarna, hearing Senior Mami’s command, tears open the telegram.
Her eyes bulge, her jaw drops, and she gasps, “Janaki! Your sister!”
That evening, Janaki, accompanied by her husband, is on a bus bound for the town of Kumbakonam. She is wondering how much longer laughter can last in the world, now that it has been returned to its source. Like the heroine Sita, in the Ramayana, swallowed by the earth, Visalam has been taken by the giggling, gurgling River Kaveri in flood.
Janaki knows what the neighbours will be saying. There’s always someone who is taken, in every generation-the question is only who it will be and when. They all will have lost family members and will want to talk about them, and Janaki and her siblings will be forced to be polite while Visalam’s husband and children… how will they bear this loss?
Oh, how she hates the rainy season! Janaki slams the bus window’s shutter against the wet. Baskaran, at her side, says nothing. She starts weeping again and eventually falls asleep on his shoulder. In the dark, he lifts his hand to stroke her cheek and when she shifts, he brings her head to rest on his shoulder once more.
At Visalam’s family’s house, three matrons Janaki has never met rush at her, awash in tears. She feels her bile rising and dashes to bend over some bushes. Baskaran explains about the pregnancy and the ladies cluck. Janaki’s sisters and Visalam’s in-laws jockey past the strangers to take her arms, ushering her in toward a bath and sleep.
The stunned house is quiet. That’s not always the way when tragedy strikes a gregarious people. Visalam’s in-laws had loved Visalam as though she’d been born to them.
Her widower performs the necessary rites. He is in his early thirties but looks ten years older than he did the last time Janaki saw him, six months ago, his laugh lines like cuts in his gaunt face.
Saradha has come from Thiruchi; Sita from Tiruvannamalai; Laddu has brought Kamalam and Radhai from Cholapatti. He will return to Cholapatti for a week and bring Krishnan and Raghavan back for the thirteenth-day ceremony so they needn’t miss school. Vairum and Vani also arrive from Madras, in time to see Visalam’s ashes committed to the river that took her life.
The night they all gather, Sita wonders aloud if their father knows. “Does any of you have the least idea where he is?” She looks around at them, facing blank, weepy looks.
“I…” Laddu clears his throat inefficiently. “I had sent Vairum Mama a telegram asking him to inform our father. He is the only one of us who might know where he is!” he says defensively in response to several incredulous looks. “And Vairum Mama is honourable. He would have done it.”
Saradha looks at Sita with concern and says, “But maybe he didn’t.”
Kamalam bites her lip. “Or couldn’t find him.”
But the next night, when Laddu discreetly asks Vairum, Vairum assures him, “Oh, yes, I certainly did. Sent him a telegram.” Vairum smiles, softly sardonic, not without pity. “I didn’t offer to pay for his bus fare, though. He might have thought that an insult.”
“Where is he now?” Laddu asks, a bit too eagerly.
“He is very near, as it happens.” Vairum wears an even, appraising expression. “Thiruchi. Barely fifty miles.”
Laddu looks small and stammering. “And do you know he got it?”
“The telegram was sent to his home.” Vairum rises and stretches. “Presumably, he got it.” He looks around at Goli’s children, who look back at him, with Sivakami’s features, and Goli’s, and Thangam’s, and Vairum’s own, and the looks of ancestors none of them will ever know.