He asked her to take the wide plate covering the large vessel and clean it with some tamarind, but she hesitated as she was not very accustomed to brass vessels. Since he couldn’t ask his mother to do it—after all, it might provoke her to say something harsh—he did it himself. Once cleaned, the brass plate shone as bright as the new mug they had purchased that day. Then he helped her arrange everything on it. He kept the two bunches of poovan bananas on two sides of the plate and placed the coconut near one of them. All the other objects went in the middle. Once she spread out the paper flowers and pinned them to the fruits, the plate looked beautiful. She had never seen such a gift plate before. These traditions were new for her.

There was some food leftover from the morning. He said, ‘There will be a feast after the function, but it probably won’t begin before midnight. You won’t be able to go without food for so long, so let’s eat a little bit before we leave.’

Since Saroja had arrived in the village, they had been cooking rice. But his mother wouldn’t even touch it. She prepared her own food. Whether it was kambu millets or pap, she made it for herself in the cowshed and ate it right there. No one knew when exactly she did the cooking.

Kumaresan tried reasoning with his mother several times: ‘Please eat the rice we are making. Why are you lighting a separate fire?’

She had the same curt response each time: ‘I placed my trust in you all these years. And you have clearly dishonoured it. From now on, I am alone. I don’t expect you to feed me. I have not fallen so low in the world that I would shamelessly eat the food made by just any woman. All I need are a few things. It is enough if you leave me alone and don’t touch my belongings.’

Marayi did not change her stance no matter how many times he tried to convince her to eat with them. For the first few days, her words hurt him. But slowly he grew accustomed to her stubbornness. She always found something snide to say about their food: ‘They think they can eat rice every day, as though they have a field brimming with harvest here.’ Or, ‘If the horse is hungry enough, it will eat the oats as well as the grass.’

Now, as they ate the little bit of leftover rice, they could hear the sounds of melam and music.

‘The procession from the uncle’s house has started,’ he said. ‘Let’s not join them. We’ll go by cycle and wait near the temple in Molappalayam. That’s where people carrying gift plates from the other villages will gather. We can walk with them.’