Kumaraswamy smiles to himself. Then he says softly, ‘What about you, my Gangi? What do you want in life?’

Gangi shakes her head sadly, inside the dark walls of the temple. ‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘I just want some light, some softness and some joy in my life. That’s all.’

Kumaraswamy tells her the lessons he has learnt at school and stories about how the sun is the centre, how the earth – which is round – goes around it and how the moon goes around the earth. He tells her the history they are studying, of the swarajya her father was talking of. He teaches her to sing the ekikarna agitation song, Udayavaagali namma cheluva Kannada nadu. But patriotism bores her. So he sings the lilting film song ‘Naakavane naachisuva lokavideno’ from Bhookailasa. In English, he tells her, this song will be sung as ‘This world is better than heaven.’ Gangi listens in wonder and learns the words.

They talk through the wall about everything and anything. He sings to her silly songs and rhymes they had teased each other with as children. They remember how he would throw mallige and kanakambara flowers at her each time she passed his house. They laugh about how she would always just run away and never talk to him.

Kumaraswamy recalls the ganda-hendti aata they played as young children. The English words for that are husband-wife game, he tells Gangi. In those days, when we hardly knew anything, we knew we were husband and wife, he tells her. Gangi doesn’t respond.

After a while, they find a wall where a stone has come loose. They look at each other through the hole, then hold hands. Now, he brings her mallige and kanakambara flowers, stolen from his mother’s garden, which he presses into her hands. He scornfully tells her that Annaiah’s flowers are all imaginary and these are the real ones. Gangi does not contradict him, she holds her peace and listens to his voice, as though in a dream.

He caresses her fingers as if they are feathers, then hesitantly tastes each finger. Gangi’s eyes glaze over, her body trembles, but she cannot pull her hand back. The stones come down, one by one, worked aside by feverish hands on both sides. Soon there is an opening, wide enough for a body to squeeze through. Kumaraswamy gathers courage, drinks some saraayi for luck and goes through.

Gangi finds fresh delights and new joys. Kumaraswamy has never touched a girl, he is very hesitant and very shy. His lips tremble, his arms ache. There is a reverence in his eyes and in his fingers which Gangi has never seen before. In between feeding Nagegowda, playing with him and putting him to sleep, she spends time lying in Kumaraswamy’s lap, caressing him and being caressed. She touches his cheeks and feels his lips. Is it wrong? She looks into Kumaraswamy’s eyes. He looks into hers. And they are lost. The days melt into languor.

She alternates between tears of joy, sighs of ecstasy, screams of wonder and bouts of depression. She feels the hard mature passion and knowledge of Annaiah at night and the pure wonder of learning it all with Kumaraswamy in the day. They both smell the same, though, drenched in the overpowering smell of saraayi.