What a woman she used to be! Such a curvaceous body. She was so stunning. She had the beauty of good health, the beauty of youth, of flawlessness, of innocence. She was like a goddess. But now she’d become as gaunt as a plucked chicken. She did not want to eat rice or meat. The moment she took a morsel of food close to her mouth, she retched. Then she dropped the food from her right hand, pushed herself upright with her left hand, and walked away. All the women in the town came together to pray and make offerings on her behalf. They tied an amulet on her wrist. They performed rituals to ward off evil eyes. But nothing helped. She was wasting away.

Then, one day, the news started to spread that the man in question had visited her at home the night before. In fact, she said so to her friends.

After that, people started saying he visited her every full-moon night. But no one ever actually saw him. They only had her word for it, but they believed her completely. If they saw that Chellathayi had combed her hair, fashioned it into a bun, and worn flowers around it, then they were sure it was a full-moon night. On those days, she made herself wonderfully fragrant by applying sandalwood paste all over her body. The next morning, before the workday began, all her friends gathered at her house. Chellathayi delighted in telling them about the moonlight stranger’s arrival the night before, his flirtations, his playfulness, his naughtiness . . . And her girlfriends sat around her and listened with desire in their eyes and envy in their hearts.

I once went to check on her, and she told me the whole story herself! She was absolutely unabashed in the language she used. It did not even occur to her that she should not be talking of such matters at all. When I listened to her talk of such things, even I became guileless . . .

Asan smiled wide when he said this, showing us his stained teeth. We tried to speed up the story. “What happened in the end? Tell us that quickly.”

Some five or six months went on like this. Then one day she told her girlfriends that she was pregnant. And they believed her. No one had an iota of doubt about it. Ah! You should have seen how glorious she looked in those days.

“Was she beautiful?” we asked.

Oh, you can’t just call her beautiful. We have seen beauty in many. But this was a whole other kind of gorgeousness. I don’t know what to liken it to. Even those women who are most renowned for their beauty would have hanged themselves in shame. There was something special about her.