What pleasure do I have now? It’s a daily struggle to keep body and soul together. Soon my elder daughter will attain age and the puberty rites will have to be carried out. I must somehow put a bit of gold on her wrists. Earrings in her ears too. New clothes to be sewn with embroidery of gold thread and satin with ribbons. I shall see that she does not tread the same streets that I do. She must go to school, pass examinations, perhaps be a teacher someday. Only one feeling dominates my mind now—the children should not cry for food. I carry bags of bread, rice, vegetables, tea and sugar back home. Sometimes an apple. One apple that they will share. The handcarts are piled with apples. They come from another country, and look so fresh and tempting before the sun begins to crinkle their thin skins and make the flesh dry and tasteless.

When I reach home I stretch myself out on the padura with its smooth woven strands of reed and fall asleep. A restless sleep. A sleep disturbed by dreams. Grotesque faces, masks, the great vesmuhuna, grimace at me. The towering bodies of demons lean over me. Huge, protuberant eyes look deep into my very being. Raging fires engulf me and the screech of a slaughtered cock bird, long-drawn-out and shrill, echoes in my ears. My arms flail about me and my daughter shakes me by the shoulder and whispers anxiously, ‘Amma, amma, what is it? You are frightening the little ones ….’ One of these days when I have the money to spare, I must invite a kapurala from the devale, the temple near my home. He will invoke the blessings of the gods and they will give me protection against any evil or sickness that afflicts me. He will carry out the deviyage, the ceremonies of propitiation. I will lose my fear, my terror. I will wear a protective charm in a silver suraya round my neck. Then perhaps the dreams will cease. I cannot think of giving up this job just yet. I have grown used to it too. I know I must be careful. I do not want to die and leave my children orphans. But they must not go hungry. Sometimes I am terrified. A great fear builds up in me. I feel I am being swallowed into this huge maw, stuck in the gullet of an unknown monster, struggling, still half alive, for breath. The men who come to me are all strangers. And will always remain strangers. I do not know how they will hurt me or abuse my mind and body.