‘Why have you abandoned me like this? Do you think you will be at peace wherever you are? My curse won’t let you be. If I were still married, even if it was to a poor man, at least I could wear a red sari and flowers in my hair, and go to a few places, be treated respectfully. Now wherever I go, because of you, I have to stay in a corner as a widow. What did I ever do to you? Why did you abandon me? What happiness did I experience being married you? And if you had to leave, why did you give me a child? Was it because you wanted me to suffer? If I didn’t have this one, I would have been back at my father’s home, living merrily with my people. You have destroyed that too. You won’t be at peace.’

There was not a single day when she did not speak to her husband thus. She had even coined new abuses to hurl at him. ‘Dey! Konnavaaya!’ That’s the name she used most of the time. Kumaresan would say to her, ‘Amma, why are you talking to the dead man?’ And she would reply, ‘Being dead does not mean you have settled your accounts. You are answerable no matter where you are.’ Kumaresan had laughed while telling Saroja all this.

‘I always imagined,’ said Kumaresan, ‘that my father appeared in front of my mother and stood there laughing at all that she said. I could never see him. If I tried to picture him, he’d have a crooked mouth, a konnavaayan! That is all. I used to think that if I really remembered his face, perhaps he would appear before my eyes, too.’

But Marayi did not seem to talk much with her husband any more. Only with Kumaresan. If she could chase and hound a dead man, was she going to leave a live one in peace? She didn’t say much to him when he was at home, though. Mostly, she stayed silent. Kumaresan said that even that was a way of conversing for her. In his opinion, it was harder to endure this speech of silence. But Saroja could hear Marayi addressing him in his absence. The first few times, she thought Kumaresan had returned and she stepped out of the hut to see if it was so. That’s when she realized Marayi often spoke to people who were not there.