Thimmakka’s heart is aflame. There could be only one reason why Annaiah was asking Chenni to weave garlands for him. The whole village knows what it means. She now remembers with absolute clarity the insults Annaiah heaped on her when she went to him. He was waiting for Chenni and she had gone instead. The anchor of her childhood and her youth has come loose. She has loved the wrong man.

Thimmakka returns to Ramappa’s house, consumed by rage, certain about only one thing. Annaiah and Chenni have made a fool of her. She wants revenge. Thimmakka tells Ramappa that his marriage to Bangari is out of the question. ‘I will jump into the well if you do that and the entire village will hold you responsible,’ she threatens.

‘What about the child?’ he asks.

‘You want the child? We will tell everyone that I am pregnant. The three of us can go on a pilgrimage, which I will get a dream about. Bangari can deliver the baby and we will bring it back. You and I can look after it as our child. Bangari can also live here. All right?’

Ramappa and Bangari have to bend to Thimmakka’s plan. They disappear from the village and come back a few months later with baby Chandrashekara who is, Thimmakka says, her son. The village women, looking at Thimmakka’s trim figure and Bangari’s puffed-up one, draw their own conclusions. No one says anything, however, while Bangari quietly accepts her lot and lives with them.

14

THE BIRTH OF PARVATI

handrashekara, affectionately called Chandru, is about a year old, Nagegowda’s son Krishnegowda is three, and her own sons Rajegowda and Sundru are five and three years old when Chenni becomes pregnant again. Puttaswamegowda goes about his work with a distracted air.

There is a lot of talk about population control and he has heard of something called family planning in the market town. At a big rally there, a woman named Indramma Gandhi spoke some two years ago. People tell him that day that she is the prime minister of India, of which his village and his newly named Karnataka state is also a part. She speaks about why she and her son Sanjay want family planning. Apparently the number of people in the country is too much for the land to bear. Puttaswamegowda hears that Sanjay has forcibly made people not have children. He shudders. How can you do that? He is told that Indramma and her son put thousands of people in jail, beat up anybody who opposed their ideas. Not the way he would have dealt with things.

Of late, Indramma has visited the market town three times; apparently she is standing for election from somewhere here to become prime minister again. She lost to somebody in her own constituency, far away in the North, they say. There is a lot of talk he hears about Janata Party and someone called George Fernandes. Still, he and the village are not involved, as they are not voters in this election, and can concentrate on their own troubles.