Sometimes I feel my body is not a body. Just a piece of used up earth, ploughed time and time again. So many hands, through need, through greed and desire, have reaped its harvest. Sometimes the yield is been so sparse, the earth so drought ridden. At others there is a rich harvest—a rare, plentiful yield, an abundance of golden grain. And then, as if a monstrous seed had been sown, dark and fungus ridden, the husk becomes boll, the grain bitter. The scarecrow set in the middle of the field grimaces. A wry grin twists the black pot face. A hot wind sweeps over the stalks and bends them, tangles their roots. Over the grain the old women with their bodies humped in toil scythe the stalks and sing mournful dirges. A vast famine hits the land and skeletal hands scrabble in the dust …. These are the visions that often possess me. I must wear a suraya, with its amulet, round my neck to protect me from misfortune. I must save money for a thovil, the magical ceremony that will rid me of the demons of sickness that have taken over my mind and body.