To be single, in the eyes of Sulo’s mother, was not to be envied, especially when all the other young cousins were getting married and going abroad. They appeared to have made favourable matches with doctors, accountants, lawyers. There had even been love affairs which had won parental approval. In this instance dowry posed no problem—love marriages did not require dowries. Sulo was attractive but there had been no wild and passionate love affair to transform her life. The choice would have to be made by the matchmakers. It was time to arrange something for her. A proposal. Nearing thirty meant that the choices would narrow. Sulo was no longer a teenager and the twenties were rushing into the thirties. She had educated herself, obtained a degree and was now following another academic course in the University. Mr Saldin, a member of one of the charismatic churches that Sulo had occasionally attended, whose own daughters had disappointed him by not going in for higher studies, had, together with his wife, exhorted Sulo to find a husband. ‘Education will hinder you rather than help,’ they said. ‘Most men do not want women to be more educated than themselves. Better learn how to run a house, cook and look after children.’

‘Must be jealous, no, Aunty?’ Sulo would comment.’ Their own daughters didn’t study, that’s why they are saying like that.’ She was quietly ambitious and wanted to excel in her studies. Compensations. She wanted to do her Masters, her Ph.D. To reach the top professionally one day. Her dreams of the romantic hero were diminishing. She began to see the practical aspects of settling down. She was proud of the fact that she was a graduate teacher. She felt above the class of trained English teachers. ‘I am the only English graduate in the area,’ she would say with a sense of pride. ‘I am now in the National School. I teach A Level English.’ This was indeed prestigious. She had attended weekend classes in order to get her degree, qualifying stage by stage. She had to travel miles and miles by train, by bus, by van, on long and tedious journeys, spending the greater part of her salary on tuition fees. She had also to pay her boarding fees. In spite of it, she was always well dressed, well groomed, took care of her skin, of her hair. After her bath she would emerge, her skin golden with the tinge of kasturi manjal, wearing the clothes with their darts and crosscuts, the two-piece suits sewn for her by a little provincial seamstress or brought by an aunt from a thrift shop abroad, ready to sally forth to her classes in English Literature or Philosophy or Greek and Roman Civilization.