The two girls, Kamalini and Yogini, felt left out and unwanted. They didn’t get on well with the step-mother. The young aunts were unmarried and were envious of Radha and Ragini. They themselves lived in the Roman Catholic dominated part of the city, away from the big mansions and the solidly built houses of the prosperous Tamil families in Cinnamon Gardens. They felt, as a result, that they would not have the same chances of making a good marriage. They were not sought after. It had only been Shivarani who had managed to escape. Their minds began to plot and plan.

Everyone in the city, in their social circle, was buzzing with the news of the proposal for Radha from one of the Vigneshweran sons. Not for them such matches. They felt jealousy eating into them at the thought of the privileges she would enjoy. They themselves could never escape from their little middle-class house in Kotahena. Their brother was a dissolute young man, jobless, idle. He would visit his nieces, listen to their conversations, report on them to all and sundry. He was friendly with Sivam who confided in him his great attraction to Radha. All of these young girls stayed in the same house, especially since Radha’s mother was often in the North in their family house in the village where the sons were being educated during the war years.

There was a great deal of innocence among the cousins. They walked about in the garden, sitting on a garden seat among the rose bushes, the sun warm on their skins, breathing in the coolness from the water sprinkled on the flowers and the potted palms. They had nothing to do with their time except to talk, laugh, play games, go shopping or visit the temple while they waited for their marriages to take place. Radha had her veena and singing lessons of course and her very sweet and melodious voice would fill the air with the ragas and kirthanams.

Days passed in dalliance. The piles of silk sarees in their tissue folds began to grow, stored carefully in their cardboard boxes in the wardrobe. Paru sarees. Kinkhab of Benares. Patola. Heavy with gold lace and gold embroidered flowers. Like Sita’s, of whose elaborate trousseau Valmiki wrote, ‘woollen stuffs, furs, precious stones, fine silk vestments of diverse colours, princely, ornamental and sumptuous carriage of every kind.’ Wealth would be displayed through these rich clothes and through the jewels Radha would inherit from her mother—the attiyal, mukukutthi, bracelets and earrings. There would also be delicate nets, chiffons, georgettes embroidered in silk or silver thread or studded with sequins. After her marriage Radha would have to display herself in several changes of clothes on those visits to houses of relations or those occasions when she would have to entertain guests. The seamstresses usually visited the house and the sewing machines whirred as they sewed saree blouses and undergarments.