She wondered how her father and brother were managing the food and cooking now. Whether she could cook well or not was immaterial; she had been doing it since the age of ten. On Sundays, if they chose to cook meat, her brother helped her. Her father only did the eating. He knew nothing about preparing meals. He often said, ‘Anything blessed with my daughter’s touch will taste good.’ He never had a complaint about the food she made. Her brother, on the other hand, murmured words of dissatisfaction once in a while, especially when he came home drunk.

That always angered her. ‘Go! Go find kurma and kozhambu somewhere else,’ she’d shout.

He would retort, ‘Oh! Am I not supposed to find fault with anything your majesty does? All that might work on father, but not me.’

Then she would yell, ‘You’ll get a wife one day. You try all this with her.’

And he would come back with, ‘God knows who is unlucky enough to marry you! You shrill creature!’

After a fight like this, they would not talk to each other for two days. It ended only when her brother broke the ice; she was never the one to do so.

On such days, when her father and brother returned home from work, one of them would bring her a packet of savory snack mixture. The sight of that would make all her anger melt away. Whenever her father came home drunk, he was absolutely quiet. His silence was a sign of his drunkenness. With her brother, on the other hand, she’d understand that he was drunk if he came home calling out ‘Roja, Roja dear!’ from a distance. He would use all sorts of terms of endearment: ‘My piece of gold, my little calf . . .’

He was constantly scratching his legs. Sometimes she applied oil on his legs. ‘Your legs are full of sores from all the chemicals. Why don’t you leave this wretched job?’ she scolded him. From foot to knee, his legs were covered with scars of old blisters and new ones forming right on top of them.

‘Who else is offering me a job?’ he reasoned with her. ‘This is the only place that offers work every day. Other than what we spend on our food, all I want is to save some money for your wedding.’

Saroja had never felt the absence of a mother. The only time she thought of her was when someone asked about her.

There weren’t too many people out and about in Vairipalayam. But she could hear sounds of children playing. She had not wanted to come here. Or go anywhere really. She had guessed that wherever she went, it would be hotter than it was on the rock back in Kumaresan’s village.

There had been one important change over the past week. A cat that had screamed and run away from her when she had first arrived had finally warmed up to her. It came to her, arched its body and rubbed against her legs. If she was lying on the cot, it came and curled up next to her. When she sat down to eat, the cat came and sat close to her, made as if to eat off her plate, and purred. Kumaresan had marked an area of his plate for the cat to eat from. For some reason, Saroja did not like that. How could she eat from the same plate that the cat had just licked?