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Chapters (30)
  1. Cover Page
  2. THE GITA
  3. ATTRITION
  4. CHAPTER 1
  5. CHAPTER 2
  6. CHAPTER 3
  7. CHAPTER 4
  8. CHAPTER 5
  9. CHAPTER 6
  10. CHAPTER 7
  11. CHAPTER 8
  12. CHAPTER 9
  13. DISPERSION
  14. CHAPTER 10
  15. CHAPTER 11
  16. CHAPTER 12
  17. CHAPTER 13
  18. CHAPTER 14
  19. CHAPTER 15
  20. CHAPTER 16
  21. CHAPTER 17
  22. CHAPTER 18
  23. CHAPTER 19
  24. CHAPTER 20
  25. GRAVITATION
  26. CHAPTER 21
  27. CHAPTER 22
  28. CHAPTER 23
  29. CHAPTER 24
  30. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

‘In Colombo,’ Appa continued, ‘it’s everywhere. It’s in the newspapers, there are posters, and bhikkus hand out leaflets. The monks are telling people about the greatness of Buddhism—telling Sinhalese Buddhists who ten years ago barely cared about their own religion.’

‘I know, but Ponnambalam’s speech did more damage than good. He was trying to make the monks angry.’

‘But the rioters weren’t just monks,’ Appa replied. ‘Normal Sinhalese people are starting to believe that Ceylon is only for the Sinhalese, not the Tamils.’

‘Don’t worry, thambi. We will find a way to live together, we always have,’ her uncle replied. ‘We will pacify the monks and this will pass. You worry too much, like Ponnambalam. For now, Ceylon is for the Ceylonese—the Tamils and the Sinhalese. But mostly, it is for the British Empire.’ Nala could tell he was trying to make Appa laugh, but it didn’t work.

CHAPTER 2

Colombo, 1945

Steep steps led down from the temple courtyard to the water’s edge. The women, wrapped in layers of luminous silk, had developed the art of lifting their saris high enough to let them navigate the steps safely, but not so high as to reveal the soft skin above the ankle or the hint of a petticoat—things only a husband should see. They learned to walk these steps elegantly, no longer running and jumping down them as they did when they were girls.

Nala had come to the Pillayar temple with her mother to pray for a good husband. She was seventeen and it was time to beseech the Elephant God. She was relieved when her parents started to talk about marriage. Her cousin-sisters were teasing her about Mohan; he was her mother’s brother’s son—a ‘marriageable cousin’—but he was a brother to her. Archi had overheard the talk and slapped her cousin-sister, hard. ‘We are not villagers,’ she declared.

At the temple, Nala offered a plate of sweet rice and garlands to the deity and a portion of her father’s wages to the priest in order to secure her marriage.

She then crossed the courtyard to the temple pond, with an offering of jasmines from her mother’s garden. She sat on the final step, carefully gathering her new sari closer to her feet. She arranged the pleats of peacock blue silk neatly, as her mother had taught her, pressing them with her palm and turning them in the sunlight to watch the hibiscus pink shimmer through the blue weave. Her mother called it ‘silk shot’. The new sari had been a gift from her father.