Nagarajan agrees. Lalita will not go back there tomorrow. Smita will take her along on her rounds, he says. She will teach her the trade practised by her mother, and her grandmother before her. She will give her the basket. After all, it’s what the women of her family have done for centuries. It is her dharma. Smita was wrong to have hoped for anything else. She had wanted to set Lalita on another path, a different path from the one laid out for her. And the Brahmin had beaten her back into place with his cane.

The discussion is closed.

That night, Smita prays before the little altar to Vishnu. She knows she won’t be able to sleep. She thinks again about the five lakes of blood, and wonders how many lakes must be filled with their blood, the blood of the untouchables, to free them from the yoke they have carried for thousands of years? There were millions like her. Multitudes resigned to their fate, waiting patiently for death. Everything will be better in the next life, her mother used to say. And perhaps the relentless cycle of reincarnation will be broken. Nirvana, the ultimate destination, that was what she hoped for. She dreamed of dying beside the Ganges, the sacred river. After that, it was said, the harsh grind of life would cease. Never to be reborn – to melt into the absolute, the cosmos, that was the ultimate goal. A blessing not granted to many, her mother said. Most were condemned to live. We must accept the order of things as a divine punishment. That’s how it is: eternity must be earned.

And while they wait for eternity, the Dalits cower, and work.

But not Smita. Not this day.

She has accepted the cruel inevitability of her lot. But they will not have her daughter. She promises herself this, in front of the altar to Vishnu, in the dark hut where her husband is already sleeping. No, they will not have Lalita. Her rebellion is silent, inaudible, almost invisible.

But it is there.

Giulia

Palermo, Sicily

He’s like Sleeping Beauty, thought Giulia, as she looked at her father.

He had been lying between the white sheets of the hospital bed for eight days now. His condition was stable. He looked peaceful, sleeping like a bride who waits to be awoken. Giulia remembered the story of the Bella Addormentata that he would read to her when she was a child. He would put on a deeper voice for the Wicked Fairy, the one who casts the evil spell. She had heard the story a thousand times, but it was always a relief when the princess awoke at last. She had loved that so much: her father’s voice ringing through the house at bedtime.

The voice was silent now.

Everything was silent now, around her papà’s bed.