I know they don’t understand what I’m saying, but I can only say it in English because the few Tamil words I know have disappeared. It’s a fear that’s jerking around inside me. I’m telling myself it’s only the stories I’ve been reading in the news lately – all those girls and women raped and dumped and hanging from trees. It’s Mallika’s penis-worshipping the puppies that’s bothering me, the bloody propagation of patriarchy by women in this country. I’m telling myself that I’m strong. I’m standing outside my own house, the dogs are here, it’s fucking daylight! Nothing is going to happen. But I’m a quivering mess by the time I get to the gate. The dogs whisk through, shaking the sand off their coats, all gambol and play. I latch the gate, and I run up the stone path to the house, and by the time I get to my room and lock the door, I’m weeping.

12

The headman Valluvan’s house is not the largest in the village, but the land around it sprawls with coconut and mango trees, and his wife, Nila, who’s constantly hunched over a broom, keeps it as clean as a shrine.

When I get there, he’s sitting in his usual place – on the thinnai, reading a newspaper. He’s wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and blue checked lungi, and his gold watch glints in the sun when he waves.

‘Didn’t bring your sister?’

‘She’s too busy taking care of a new puppy,’ I say, standing in his yard and looking around.

The clothes line sags with children’s clothes and a row of plastic pots filled with water sit in the baking sand. ‘Something’s different? You put on a new roof?’

‘Yes,’ Valluvan says. ‘We got rid of the thatch and put tiles.’

‘Looks nice and pukkah.’

‘Hot today, isn’t it?’ he says.

We always exchange pleasantries about the weather, even though it’s only ever too hot, too rainy or too dry. There is never not enough heat.

I leave my slippers beside a cluster of others lined up outside the house and follow Valluvan inside. He flicks on three glaring tube lights and motions to one of the squat jute stools in the room.

Most times I visit we talk about village politics and the state of Valluvan’s crops. Today he wants to talk about safety. ‘There was a death in Mugaiyur,’ he says. ‘Near here. A fellow called Perumal. He was a lorry driver but had some kind of land-brokering business on the side. Yesterday afternoon a group of thugs dragged him out of his house and beat him to death with sticks.’

I stare at the teal-painted wall ahead. There’s a calendar, which is still stuck on the month of July, and a photograph of a smiling woman saint they call Amma, who gives benediction to her devotees by hugging them.

‘Some of us think that these brokers will be coming for our land next. There is a coal-plant project they want to build near here and all these government goons are involved. There’s little we can do. You should join us. Find a city lawyer to help us.’