It is just past midnight when Annaiah enters the courtyard of the headman’s house. Lightning flashes, untimely for the time of the year. Abruptly, the feeble bulbs in the house and the streetlights all short-circuit. Ajji lights a lamp at Sundru’s bedside. Sweat streams down his face and body, but the myriad colours on him remain, as vivid reminders of all that the girls want, she thinks grimly.

Hearing a sound, Ajji picks up her lamp and goes up to the main door. Annaiah stands there with a single flame-red bud in his hand. Her eyes widen. It is the suryavamsi. She touches the garland at her waist, which has several of these buds, still fresh after seventeen years. Her eyes speak of her dread. He smiles.

‘Yes, I have come to fulfil my destiny. I must enter your house today to look at Sundru. It is only I who can save him now.’

Ajji looks at Annaiah for a moment and blocks his entry. ‘We will bring him out.’

He smiles and asks, ‘I have lived long enough, haven’t I? Is my life more important than Sundru’s? He is young. He has to live long, raise a family. Let me in.’

Her eyes fill with tears. She thinks frantically: mixed blood. Krishnegowda is not in the house, he is at the Ooramma temple with everyone else. Of our mixed bloodline, only Bangari is here. I will keep an eye on her. Even Chandru – oh yes, Ajji knows that Chandru is really Bangari’s – has gone to the temple, so Annaiah is temporarily safe if he comes in.

Annaiah calmly walks to Sundru’s room. Thimmakka, who has just had a swig of paanaka before lighting more lamps at Sundru’s sick bed, draws in a swift breath as he enters. This is the black harbinger of his death. She has counted every day for seventeen years; that’s how long it’s been, almost to the day.

She watches grimly, like everyone else. Annaiah, muttering something in the alien language, gently touches Sundru’s eyelids with the flower bud, and his eyes flick open. He sits up … But what is this? Sundru suddenly gets up and swiftly walks out the door, as though he had never been ill. He walks with an arrogance not his own. Parvati rushes out to the courtyard to see where he is going. He is headed towards the banyan tree by the wall, to the doll Ramani, which is waiting for the burning.

Parvati quickly follows him, with Thimmakka in tow. Soon after Kamanahabba this year, Parvati is to marry Thimmakka’s son Chandru, so she is suitably shy around her. But now, in her anxiety, she clutches Thimmakka’s hand. Some of the bolder women follow along with Bangari, who, Ajji insists, should go with them and not stay back with Annaiah.