“Just brush that all aside. I don’t want to hear about the customs of our wretched people. Do you think that my daughter is a woman of the veil? Do you know of anyone in our community who has taken his wife and daughter on a ship? I took them with me thirty years ago. My entire village was against it. ‘To hell with you, you fools,’ I said to them before I got on the boat. ‘Over there, your sons and sons-in-law are running after Chinese women!’ She grew up in Singapore. If you come over one day, she will serve you tea and also size you up in one glance. That’s the kind of girl she is.”

Khader went to Kalakkad that evening. He found the girl utterly ugly. Had she taken after her father, she could have been quite beautiful. But even if she had taken after her mother, there was no reason for her to be so horrid. Khader thought of his mother. He also thought of the woman who had entranced him at the Krishnan temple festival, whose mother had served her naked to him after taking fifty rupees from him. He also thought of the beautiful faces and bodies of all the women he had been with since then. A wave of despair rose to choke him. Stunned and distracted, he sat on a stool at the back of his store. The phone call came from Kanyakumari on behalf of the director. “I will give you all the details tomorrow morning. Expect no further delay,” he promised them.

He ran over to Aziz’s store. He told him the entire matter. “I almost had it in my hands. But it has slipped away.”

Aziz sat silently for a few minutes. Then he said, “Khader, there is nothing to worry about. You will have the passbook in your hands by ten tomorrow morning.”

“What?!”

“It will be in your name! From now on, we are one, aren’t we? So this turned out well.”

Khader was at a loss for words. He sat still.

“Khader, don’t you like my daughter?” asked Aziz, smiling.

Khader did not respond; he couldn’t. Without a word, he left and walked slowly back to the tamarind-tree junction.

11

11.