‘I’ll help you, mahal,’ Nala said, also avoiding eye contact.

Siva watched his wife and mother-in-law licking their lips. ‘I’ll have whatever you’re having,’ he replied as the children laughed knowingly.

•

The invitation made her tear the cuticles off her nails. A mother-daughter afternoon tea organised by one of Smrithi’s friends. Everyone was supposed to bring a plate, and the little girls and their mothers would spend the afternoon together.

‘Please don’t make curried fish patties, Amma. Cream cheese on crackers would be great,’ Smrithi suggested.

Cream cheese on crackers? White people missed out on so much, she would never understand it. She looked at the invitation again.

It was a pool party.

‘Enough said,’ said Malathy.

‘More than enough said,’ said Shanthi.

‘What is wrong with these people?’ asked Ranji. ‘Why would you want to get darker or wet? There’s a reason Sri Lankans don’t swim, and we’re islanders. Do you even have swimmers?’

Priya didn’t have swimmers, she didn’t know how to swim, and she certainly didn’t want to be semi-naked in front of semi-strangers. She scrolled through her list of plausible excuses.

‘Smrithi, I just don’t think I can make it. I’m running a breast cancer screening clinic …’ The clinic was next month.

She expected Smrithi to cry but instead all she said was, ‘I’m never allowed to do anything.’

‘I’ll take her, mahal,’ Nala stepped in. ‘It’ll be fun.’

When Priya arrived to pick them up after the party, she found her sixty-year-old mother in the shallow end with everyone. Nala had stripped off her sari and stood in the pool, wearing only her sari blouse and her full-length cotton underskirt. Her corrugated skin glistened in the water.

‘What are you doing?’ she said while trying to smile at the hostess. She wasn’t sure if she should smile apologetically or nonchalantly; her embarrassment just distorted her face into a look of pain.

‘Have you lost your mind? Is the heat affecting you?’ she asked under her breath as Nala dried herself and quickly draped her sari over her damp underclothes.

‘Smrithi asked me to swim with her. The other mothers were doing it and I didn’t want her to feel left out. So I got in,’ Nala replied casually.

‘Like that?’ she asked incredulously.

‘Like what?’ Nala asked.

‘Like that—in your underskirt and sari blouse?’

‘Yes of course. I don’t have a swimming costume. I can’t even swim. I nearly drowned once, you know. Archi said it was a small wave but it felt very big to me. Mohan rescued me. The swimming pool is beautiful though, much safer than the ocean, and all the other mothers were very impressed,’ Nala laughed.