This money has destroyed my grandchildren. They ride on their new bicycles, they are always in new clothes, they have wrist watches, they listen only to cassette music. They don’t study, they loaf about everywhere. Do they ever listen to my advice? My grandson is seventeen years old. Only once did he do his examination. Now he wanders around, wearing his imported clothes and new wrist watch. He doesn’t go to the temple with me on Poya day. They are all useless.’

The woman stopped for a moment to wipe the tears that trickled from her eyes. She wiped them with the pota of her white, starched saree. ‘My son-in-law doesn’t care about the children. He is a vegetable velenda in the market. The children spend money lavishly. My eldest grandson has stopped going to school. The mother sends all the money for them to live a life of ease while I have to work for them. I have to buy and carry baskets of vegetables from the market, grind the chillies, cook, and wash the clothes alone. There is no one to help me. I have a house of my own. It is worth two and a half lakhs. My sons want that too. They are waiting to chase me away, to grab that house. They have forgotten that I am their mother.’

The gold chain round her neck quivered slightly. She adjusted her saree carefully on her shoulder. A faint, proud smile appeared on her lips. ‘Mahathmaya, I could tell sastraya too. I had my own shrine room. Everybody respected me; people came to my house to hear sastraya. I had a big statue to which I prayed and made poojas every day. I could foretell the future.’

Her voice grew faint, her face lost its brief brightness as she continued: ‘Do you know what my sons did? They smashed my statue into pieces. They crushed and ground every piece under their feet into dust … they tore down the pictures of all the deities on the walls of my shrine room. They laughed and laughed at me and mocked me. “Look at us,” they said, “we have done all these evil things and yet we prosper. What has happened to us? Nothing. We eat meat, we drink arrack, we smashed all your statues into bits, we have a good time, we enjoy ourselves. We do all these evil things and yet we prosper. Look at you, you mad woman, visiting all the devales, praying, offering poojas, and see how unhappy you are.”