‘Amma, please bring some water!’ he shouted.
There was no response from the people outside. Everyone kept looking at his mother in silence. Suddenly, she became quiet and, sitting under the neem tree by the side of the rock, began snivelling into the loose end of her sari that she held against her mouth, her body shuddering with the impact of her grief. It did not look like she had heard Kumaresan’s call for help. Or if she had, she did not show it.
‘Rasamma Akka, why don’t you help?’ Kumaresan begged the woman who was in his line of vision. ‘Can you fetch some water please? She has fainted!’
But Rasamma quickly turned her face away and hid it behind the woman sitting next to her. All the others too, fearing he might call out to them for help, did the same. In the blinding heat, all he could see was a cluster of averted faces. He was filled with rage, and felt like dragging those women by their hair and throttling them. But he controlled himself. The other onlookers, whom he couldn’t see from where he stood, felt safe from his angry gaze.
Kumaresan gently placed Saroja’s limp body on the ground. Then he stepped outside the hut. Sweat covered his darkened face. He did not want to look at anyone. He rushed to the shack that served as the kitchen, filled some water in a jar, and ran back. He sprinkled some on her face to revive her, and then made her drink some. Seeing the terror in her darting glances, he tapped her gently on her cheek and said, ‘It is nothing. Don’t be afraid.’
She leaned against his chest, and whimpered.
‘This is all because we walked for so long in this bare heat,’ he said to her. ‘I will give you some leftovers soaked in water. Would you drink that?’ But she was too unsettled to respond. Leaving her alone, he went again to the kitchen and poured some of the gruel into a bowl. Stirring a few crystals of rock salt into the gruel, he went back to the hut where she was resting. ‘Drink this,’ he said, and placed the bowl close to her lips. After just a mouthful, she made a face and moaned, ‘That’s enough.’
‘Drink a little more. It cools the body down,’ he said.
But she did not like the smell of that gruel. Turning her face away, she said, ‘No. I don’t want to.’
‘Drink it. It will help you,’ he said, forcing her angrily.
She shook her head in refusal.
‘Look here!’ he raised his voice. ‘Are you going to drink this or not?’
Pleadingly, she said, ‘It stinks. I don’t like it. It will make me vomit.’