Playing with her outfit, she was distracted and never said her final prayers to Lord Ganesha. Instead, she admired her pale skin in the unpolished mirror of the water’s surface. A jealous cousin once told her this colour could only come from an illicit colonial gene. Her father said she was as beautiful as an Apsara, a celestial dancer. Her mother had disapproved, spitting three times and making him do the same. The evil eye hovered closely around the beautiful.

She had a long symmetrical face with a smattering of freckles that danced when she laughed. She surveyed her full lips and uncommonly white teeth. Appa made them all brush their teeth and tongues daily. Her eyes wandered down to her chest and the beginnings of the curves she would inherit from her mother, not like her poor flat-chested friend Rita.

She fiddled with the medallion on her necklace as she sat. It was St Christopher, the Catholic patron of travellers, given to her by Archi. Her grandmother was a devout Hindu who unashamedly prayed to all gods and saints, just in case. Her grandfather overlooked this religious indiscretion on the grounds that Jesus lived with his mother, so he seemed like a good Hindu boy anyway.

A sudden wind blew the jasmines out of her lap and into the water, breaking her reflection and reverie. She held a few flowers back and placed them in her thick plaited hair, pushing stray black curls into submission. She turned to go and looked up into the eyes of a dark young man across the pond.

•

Rajan sat on the steps, waiting nervously. His mother had sent him to the temple with Uncle Ramanathan, who had suggested the girl as a possible match. She came from a good family and her astrological chart was compatible with his. He asked to see her before he would agree to a first meeting, but no one had a photograph. A visit to the temple was easily contrived, and after making his own contribution of flowers to Lord Ganesha, he sat with his uncle on the other side of the temple pond.

‘There she is, Rajan, there she is,’ his uncle whispered. Rajan laughed—there was no need to whisper. The girl couldn’t hear them, and as he watched her study her own reflection, he realised she couldn’t see them either.

‘What do you think?’ Uncle Ramanathan asked excitedly. Rajan hadn’t thought much about marriage, he’d been studying too hard. But his mother told him it was time, and looking at the beautiful girl by the water, he blushed and agreed.

•

‘Amma, it hurts,’ Nala complained. Her mother was too rough with her.