‘If I can’t have desires at twenty, then when am I supposed to have them? When I am sixty? Amma, just because you suffered in life, does that mean I should too? If you had belonged to some other caste where widows can remarry, they might have got you married again. You’d have experienced life’s difficulties differently. Having lived alone all your life, what do you know?’

‘Fine!’ she spat. ‘I know nothing. You know everything. She has taught you everything! Otherwise, would you dare talk back to me like this? Is this how I raised you? The moment you laid eyes on her, your own mother became an outsider to you. I shouldn’t have let things go this far. Do you think you can live happily after incurring my wrath? A mother’s curse will follow you to other lifetimes too!’

Saroja stopped him from responding to this outburst. She did not have the strength to witness another screaming match. But his mother continued to rant and rave. Even when Saroja woke up in the middle of the night, she could hear her mother-in-law’s laments. She wallowed in her misery, singing all night long. She didn’t sleep all night. Kumaresan too must have heard her. How did she manage to come up with these songs?

But that was two days ago. The following day, before he left the farmstead, Kumaresan told Saroja that he would either return late or spend the night in town and return the next evening. He kept telling her his plans: that he intended to clean the bottles and start filling them with soda in the night; that he had sent for Periyasami to come and help him; that he would return latest by evening the next day; that he planned to go to the Saturday market to sell cool drinks. She neither heard nor understood him fully.

The thought that the shop would be ready soon brought her immense relief. They could move soon to Virichipalayam. But she was not sure she could spend two days here without him nearby. The giddiness that started in the morning began to settle down only by the afternoon. At night, she could not fall asleep easily even when he was with her. With him away, it would be even worse. She would lie there, expecting to hear the familiar sound of his bicycle.

‘Doesn’t matter how late it is,’ she had pleaded. ‘Please come back home. I can’t be here alone.’