‘Just come,’ Dhara said, closing her eyes again and nuzzling closer to the sleeping child.

Priya parted the net and gently slid into the bed on the other side of the baby. She curled herself around her too, completing the circle.

CHAPTER 11

Dhara sat with Smrithi on the floor, wedged into the corner of the shrine room. The lamp still burned from evening prayers. It flickered over the pale photographs of their dead. Her father’s face looked at her calmly, his eyes empty of expression, love or judgement.

He couldn’t answer her questions or tell her what was right or what was wrong. He couldn’t tell her why he had been chosen for such pain. She remembered him picking her up and putting her on his desk. Her small bottom held down the curled edges of a map. He laughed as he drew a pencil line on the thick paper around her thigh.

‘Let’s call that Dhara’s Peak. You will be immortal and sacred like the Himalayas. People will come to pray at your bottom.’

She giggled and watched as he pointed out the contours and colours that marked the rivers and jungles and villages and the dam.

‘The dam,’ he said smiling, ‘will bring great life.’

She turned her face to the wall, away from her daughter, and wept confused, bitter tears.

•

Dhara held Smrithi and walked her around Nala’s garden. She pointed out each of the flowers and trees, sometimes holding petals and leaves to the child’s tiny nose. She whispered the names of Archi’s favourite plants and her father’s favourite books. She listed the food she loved to eat and the best dishes Ayah ever made. She rattled off the names of cities she imagined exploring and all the villages in Sri Lanka she had been to. Except Gal Oya, whose name she never mentioned. She recited the Tamil alphabet, the 108 names of Lord Shiva, every prayer her parents had taught her, every temple she could remember and the name of every hit by Loretta Lynn since 1967.

‘“I’m a Honky-Tonk Girl”—remember it, Smrithi,’ she whispered into the tiny swirl of her daughter’s ear. ‘It’s a classic. It was the beginning of greatness.’ She hummed the chorus softly.

She tried to imprint her voice on her child, steadying the sound when it quivered and broke, over and over again.

She reached into the warm space between the baby’s jaw and neck, inhaling that perfect smell. She wanted to remember it forever.

•

When Dhara first asked Priya to take the baby, she refused.

‘You can’t do that, Dhara; she’s your child. She needs you, she needs her mother. You’ll feel better in a few weeks—all new mothers feel overwhelmed. Amma will help you after I leave, and Ayah, she knows what to do. I’ll come back as often as I can.’

‘It’s not that,’ Dhara said slowly.