Dasegowda is quite close now. Ajji trembles, feeling that old dread of the gumma after so many years. She draws into herself and waits for him to speak.

‘Daughter,’ he says, in his leery style, ‘I know you are worried about your husband. Don’t worry. I have a message for you from him.’

She looks at him suspiciously. As far as she knows, Sannegowda has no respect for this man. Why would he send a message through him?

Dasegowda sees the expression on Ajji’s face and shakes his head. ‘No, I am not lying. Your husband is very ill. The swelling on his penis has become very bad. He wants to see you right now. I was coming to your house to talk to you, but luckily you have come this way. Please come with me.’

Dasegowda’s mention of the swelling convinces Ajji. How can he know of it unless Sannegowda himself told him? Pulling her seere’s seragu around her head, Ajji follows Dasegowda to the Ooramma temple at the other end of the village.

As she enters the dark, she sees huddled forms inside. Ajji’s heart almost seizes. Kolli devvas, she thinks fearfully. No, it is only the three girls who have been left to Ooramma, she realizes, controlling her beating heart. She looks at them with pity and distaste. If she is not wrong, Doddegowda has done the initiation rites and temple payment for one of them, Sannegowda for the other two, one of which is after she married him. It is custom and no one bothers to ask how she or the girls feel about it. She can’t stop it and neither can they. Luckily, none of them wakes up, for how can she explain the presence of the youngest daughter-in-law of the headman’s house at this hour in the Ooramma temple with Dasegowda?

Dasegowda, taking a lit lantern from Ooramma’s chamber, leads her through the back of the temple along a path that she never knew existed. After a walk of about three hours, during which neither of them speaks a word, they come to a lake shimmering silver-white in the moonlight.

Ajji looks around her uncertainly and sees that Dasegowda is leading her towards a small hut. On the other side of the lake, there rises a hill on top of which she can just make out interlocking dark trees. This must be the rishi’s hut then. Well, of course, that is where Sannegowda has gone.

With a firmer step, Ajji makes her way to the hut and looks in. The only light in the dark room comes from a lamp in a corner. Dasegowda brings his lantern into the room, leading Ajji inside. Sannegowda is lying, his head on the lap of a man who is wearing a single piece of faded cloth that covers him from shoulders to feet, showing the white skin on his arms and neck. Ajji looks at Sannegowda in shock. Who is this man? Where is the holy rishi?