The same yellow powder completely coated the women dancing in the center of the courtyard as if they had been rolled in it—their hair, their faces, their arms, their saris. They were dancing in a frenzied state of total abandon and ecstasy, their arms grasping upward, their eyes sealed. They reminded Buki of Hasidim in rapturous bliss, blocking out from their consciousness the whole earthly scene, soaring as if in a trance, but he had never seen women in this state, he had believed they were not capable of it. They were channeling Yellamma, letting themselves be filled up by the goddess, their lover, their bridegroom, their husband. Devotees ran up to the bewitched dancers, tugging at their saris, dusted with yellow powder, urgently petitioning, supplicating desperately for the intervention of the goddess, then stuffing something in a hand that lowered from its exaltation to snatch the baksheesh. All around them children and young teenagers, mostly girls, danced completely naked or adorned here and there with the green leaves of a neem tree, and a sprig of neem in their mouths.

She spotted her sister instantly among these children, a lithe, heartbreaking fawn with dark eyes that seemed to have puddled over most of her face. You could see the resemblance, she too might have looked something like that before she had been sold and bought, though the child was blessed with a much fairer complexion, mocha latte—a different father for sure. She charged forward, scooped up her little sister, and hauled her back toward Buki so that they could make their escape, but the child managed to slither out of her arms and ran to one of the dancing women in the center of the ring, clutching her sari from which the yellow powder rained down over her velvety bare skin, crying, Ma, Ma, Ma. “Seems our girls come from a long line of devadasis, a very yikhusdik family, distinguished lineage, a dynasty like some of our top Chabad rabbis,” Buki gave himself permission to interject; I chose not to respond. By then he was hovering over the family reunion, the huddle of devadasis, the mother devadasi and her two devadasi daughters, casting his large shadow over them, listening to their exchange though not understanding a word. The mother was raging that she no longer was receiving any money from her working-girl daughter, Buki learned afterward. The daughter announced that she had come to take the sister before the mother sold her too—or before the priests got their dirty hands on her. The mother let out a cackle, universal language that Buki comprehended, and spat out, Too late, ha ha. Her eye scanned Buki from head to toe, appraising his worth. She expected twice as much money now every month as it looked like her girls had snagged themselves a rajah, she screeched as she spread her wings and transported herself in a puff of mustard-colored smoke back into the inner circle of the goddess’s handmaids, sorceresses, and oracles.