Chikthayi creeps to the courtyard door. As if sensing her presence, Putti turns and smiles. In an easy, lithe movement, she climbs onto the wall of the well and waits for Chikthayi. Chikthayi moves forward and approaches the precariously poised Putti. Gathering all her strength, Chikthayi reaches out and pushes her with a force that seems to come from somewhere else. Putti falls with an echoing slosh, deep into the well.

By the time Doddegowda, Ningamma, Sannegowda, Dyavamma and Ajji rush out to investigate the splash, Chikthayi is seated by the well, her eyes dazed, her finger pointing into the well. After much swimming and diving, Sannegowda fishes out Putti’s dripping body.

Chikthayi tells Doddegowda that Annaiah is responsible for Putti’s death. He has come back to the village and has been meeting Putti every night at the wall. Tonight, when Putti told him that she is pregnant, he has told her that she must do what Bhageerathi did and jump into the well, else her pregnancy will rouse the village against him and Kamadeva and destroy everything. So she jumped, Chikthayi says.

The women stand around, stunned; Sannegowda is grimly silent. Annaiah is responsible for Putti’s death, he is certain. He does not believe this pregnancy story, though. Chikthayi has just come out of a fever and is probably hallucinating. What if Annaiah has killed Putti as a warning to him?

Sannegowda has been told by some of his friends in the freedom movement that the British government is trying to find a way to trap him. He has been circulating illegal pamphlets and organizing groups to take up the swarajya and ekikarna movements, even if he has not been involved in any violence.

He has tried to get the villagers to donate money and time to the cause of swarajya, telling them about how people in other regions have given up land and all their wealth for it. People here are not willing to go that far, but they have been extending support, including small monetary donations, which he has been passing on to the regional leaders. Neighbouring villages are refusing to pay chanda to the inglees in civil disobedience. He has even finally managed to convince Doddegowda not to pay it.

Sannegowda has been looking out for the inglees spy. He sees it clearly now. It is Annaiah. Nobody knows where he came from or why he came here. Who knows what his intentions were in the first place? And isn’t it convenient that the Kamadeva idol he digs out is just at the very place where Doddegowda wanted to expand his land?

All this Sannegowda tells himself, perfectly aware that they are not true and not even a reason for his fury against Annaiah. A red haze is buzzing in Sannegowda’s head, a memory that he doesn’t want to remember. A week after Annaiah sets up the Kamadeva temple, Sannegowda, tortured by needs he doesn’t understand and is unable to accept, goes to the banyan tree and waits for him. Annaiah comes to the tree and looks at him sorrowfully. Sannegowda’s eyes plead with him in confusion, mute appeal and distress. He does not know how to tell Annaiah what he wants, what he struggles with every night that Annaiah spends on their veranda.