Chapters (30)
They had never spoken about what happened in Gal Oya. Dhara was only eight at the time, but she had seen more of it than a child should. She had eventually stopped screaming at night, but she never stopped waking well before dawn. Ayah used to change the sheets for her without saying a word, and Priya never complained about the regular disturbances.
She would ask her about marriage again tonight. Dhara was twenty-five years old, dangerously old for a girl, especially one whose mother was from a lower caste. They had saved a good dowry for her and tried over and over again to broker a marriage, but she had resisted. She said she wanted to be self-sufficient, but Nala didn’t understand why that meant she had to be alone.
Thank God Nandan wasn’t interested in politics. He preferred the world of parties and cricket and business. They still didn’t understand what kind of business, but he kept talking about it as though everyone knew, so they stopped asking. He had recently graduated with an accounting degree, coming first in his class. She was so proud of him—and of Rajan, who had learned the entire syllabus, making study notes and beautiful diagrams, so he could teach Nandan management accounting. Their son had not thought class attendance particularly important.
It was Rajan who had really won the first prize, she teased him.
Nala said a quick prayer of thanks to Lord Murugan for sending Priya to London. Her daughter was happy and eventually she would be blessed with a baby. Nala thanked the lord more profusely for keeping her son safe from harm. Boys in the north were arming themselves—it wouldn’t be long before they recruited Radha’s son. But not Nandan: he would get a job, marry a nice Tamil girl, go to parties, and set up a business, of some kind.
London, 1974
Priya’s baby was born three weeks early. Nala watched in horror as a stain spread across her daughter’s hospital-white bed. It grew rapidly; it was the ferrous colour of love, of death. Nurses in cloudy stockings and sensible shoes pushed her out of the way, reading charts and pressing alarms. One pale, thin arm cuffed to a blood pressure machine, another stabbed again and again as they searched for a vein. A sack of red and a plastic tube hooked into Priya—Nala followed the colour as it crept forward, confidently but slowly. Too slowly. Droplets when she wished for a river, a monsoon, a rush of strength and life. She didn’t hold the baby. She held her daughter’s hand and prayed.
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Nala returned to Colombo and two months later, Anand, Siva’s youngest brother, arrived unwillingly at Heathrow Airport with a large trunk, a short letter from his mother, Radha, and all the money she could borrow.