Annaiah comes and goes, every day and every night. He is burning as usual, driven by demons of the world beyond, oblivious to Gangi’s abstraction. Ajji wonders, but thinks that her daughter has gone deeper into the wall world. There is nothing she can do to reach or reclaim her child.

Kumaraswamy is in seventh heaven. He struts around the village looking very pleased with himself. Bhagyakka suspects that he is going to some girl, but nobody thinks of Gangi. All the world is green for Kumaraswamy and the temple of desire now lives up to its name. He listens to what Annaiah says about Ramani. He understands now with his heart, and with every sinew. And he keeps looking at the wall behind Annaiah, the wall behind which sits his own Ramani, dreaming of him.

Suddenly one day Kumaraswamy starts trembling with fear. He comes home bathed in sweat, stinking of saraayi, and tells his mother that he is going back to his uncle and aunt in the market town right away. He gives voluble explanations on how further studies are very important and how he will definitely come back to work on his father’s lands. His father doesn’t understand but Bhagyakka does. Her son has got into girl trouble, she divines, and does not bother to figure out which girl. She quickly packs him off. And Kumaraswamy never comes back. He stays away, impotent and helpless, to study and lead his lonely life with no Gangi in it. Within a couple of months, his father suddenly dies. Bhagyakka, despairing of getting a daughter-in-law or even her son back, curses the image of Gangi, sells their land to Doddegowda and moves permanently to the market town.

Ajji doesn’t know any of it, of course. All she knows is that her daughter is pregnant again. And this time, Ajji is seriously worried. Gangi is delirious and says it is the wall who is the father of her unborn child. Annaiah impatiently dismisses such talk with, ‘Of course the child is mine.’ Ajji brushes Gangi’s hair and strokes her forehead in the hope that she will sleep a little. Nothing works, and Ajji curses the fate and the father that brought Gangi to this state.

Since Gangi has been too unwell to cook most days and no one sends food for them now, they have to manage with whatever roots Annaiah brings from across the wall. She is often starving. Annaiah, for all his skills, knows nothing about cooking. Starving or not, she has to feed the baby and herself. By the time her daughter, the squint-eyed Bangari, is born, Gangi is severely fatigued and in great pain.

As labour kicks in, she knows what to expect this time. Again, there is no one to help her. There is no fight left in her for this life. The walls are drawing her into them. She wants to go. As she hears her daughter’s cry, Gangi slips away into the wall-darkness, never seeing Bangari’s face.