Seeing her crestfallen expression, he said, ‘Did you think it would be a house with a brick-tiled roof?’

Without lifting her face, she said, ‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Don’t worry, we can build one,’ he said. This was how he was. He would never say something could not be done. Whatever it was, he’d say, ‘We can do it.’ It was, of course, a different matter whether he actually did it or not. But sometimes, just those words seemed enough, didn’t they?

As they neared the rock, she could see the faces of the women sitting there. Their voices rose in a cacophony. As soon as they saw the couple, they all got up. Everyone was silent for a minute. Saroja stood with her head bowed, while Kumaresan set the bag on the ground and looked at them. No one said anything. There were five or six men in the crowd too.

Suddenly, from within one of the huts, there came a wail, and an aggrieved voice lashed out at them: ‘You have ruined me!’

Saroja looked up to see a slender figure in a white sari standing before them, her hair undone and her hands raised in the air. Kumaresan’s mother, Marayi. Saroja did not have the strength to look at her.

Marayi hit Kumaresan on his chest in protest. ‘Is this why I sent you to work in a different place?’ she demanded. ‘I had thought my son would earn some money and walk with his head held high among the people here. But he has thrown fire on me. If he had been killed in a road accident somewhere, I would have written it off as my destiny . . . I would have cried my heart out and been done with it. But now he has given me a reason to weep for the rest of my life! Why did you do this? Why did you do this?’ She clutched his shirt in her fist and slapped him repeatedly, sometimes striking his cheek and sometimes his chest. And then, turning to Saroja, she screamed, ‘What did you do to bewitch my son? How many men have you done this to?’

Like someone possessed, she grabbed Saroja by her hair. Kumaresan rushed and pulled his mother away, saying, ‘Let her be, Amma. What is this?’

Holding Saroja by the hand, he led her into one of the huts. They could still hear his mother wailing: ‘Look at him pushing me away already! What dark magic has she cast on him! Everything is ruined. The end of my days has come about.’

The sight of the old woman sitting on the rock, wailing and beating her chest repeatedly, terrified Saroja. She wasn’t even aware that she had been crying. Her body trembled with fear. Her eyes rolled up into their sockets, and the world around her faded.

‘Water, water,’ she mumbled.

‘It is nothing, don’t worry,’ he kept reassuring her, but she fainted and collapsed.

TWO

Saroja’s collapse panicked Kumaresan, who had caught her in his arms to break her fall.