Doddegowda bows and drops his scythe. He decrees that each household in the village, with the exception of Dasegowda’s, will take turns to provide Annaiah his daytime food. Even the lower castes are not exempted, for who knows what caste Annaiah is? But Annaiah’s night food, Doddegowda says, will be provided by the daughters of his own house, starting with Gowra.

The villagers think they know why Doddegowda didn’t kill Annaiah. They think Gowra is his daughter. With her mother Putti already dead, how can Doddegowda kill Annaiah and make her an orphan? They nod and gossip discreetly. Byregowda’s limp is certainly not the reason Annaiah was spared: Dasegowda has a good, clear explanation for why Byregowda stopped limping. Doddegowda and Ningamma have been keeping a vrata, Dasegowda says, which the great goddess Ooramma has blessed after he pleaded with her to do so.

Dasegowda grumbles that all the credit goes to Annaiah, but nobody asks him. Well, he tells his handful of listeners, one day the village will know what that Annaiah really is, and that will be the end of all this Kamadeva nonsense. People will come back to Ooramma then.

6

CHIKTHAYI’S STORY CONTINUES

hikthayi doesn’t recover from the faint she goes into on seeing Annaiah. Everyone tiptoes around that night, remembering the last time she was delirious like this. Her husband, uneasy, wants to carry her back home right away. He has his bullock cart readied. But Doddegowda and Sannegowda say Chikthayi should at least stay the night, given her condition.

The fever has not abated one bit in the morning. Overriding Ningamma’s, Ajji’s and even Dyavamma’s objections, Chikthayi’s husband carries the near-unconscious form to his cart, bundles his son in after her and drives away as if the kolli devvas are after him. That is the last the village sees of Chikthayi.

As far as the village knows, she never comes again, even when Dyavamma and Kalegowda die and when Ajji’s daughter Gangi is born. She does not welcome visits from anyone in the village. The villagers feel that she has become too arrogant for her own good and decide to leave her to herself.

Eighteen years later, they hear that Chikthayi has died after the marriage of her son. Ajji sheds tears for her lost sister, wipes them with the end of her seere and gets on with life. Chikthayi’s husband also never visits again, and Ajji slowly loses touch with her sister’s son and grandchildren, so no one knows anything more about them.

No one bothers to ask Ajji why Annaiah has returned to the village or where he has been for eight long years. And Ajji never tells what she has been told, what Chikthayi comes back to tell her.

Because Chikthayi does come back – one last time after she leaves the village, exactly a year after she was carried away, delirious and ill, by her husband. She comes, unseen and unknown to anyone, drawn against her will, late in the evening, to the Kamadeva temple.