She prepares for her battle to win Ramappa back. With care, she takes out the traditional green silk seere she was dressed in for her wedding night and drapes it on. She opens the steel cupboard in the corner, given by Puttaswamegowda as her dowry, with a key from the chain at her waist. She takes out a box from inside and opens it with a smaller key. The interior is glittering with gems and jewellery. She carefully considers the different chains, earrings, nose rings, finger and toe rings, hair ornaments, bangles … She takes out all her bridal jewellery, including the waistband that Puttaswamegowda got the goldsmith to make for her, wears it on her waist and sits in front of the mirror. She undoes the tangles in her lustrous black hair and oils it, strand by strand, even as Chandru’s wails rent the night air.

She goes to the pooje room where mallige buds have been gathered and kept for the next day. Greedily, she picks up the entire lot and rushes back to her mirror. She plaits her hair into a thick intricate rope, fitting in mallige buds. One by one, she puts on the hair ornaments so that her hair glows black amidst the red, green and white gems set in gold. Chandru is banging on the wooden door, but she does not hear him at all.

Thimmakka takes off the ordinary glass bangles, and the simple gold earrings and nose ring. Her great-grandmother Ningamma’s diamond ear-studs, paired with the diamond-encrusted gold jhumkis that Chenni got the market-town jeweller to make, go into her ears. She picks a single flawless diamond nose-stud next. Rummaging through the jewellery box, she picks out every gold bangle she owns, mixes the glitter with the traditional red-and-green glass bangles of the bride and puts them on.

What has she missed? Yes, rings for her fingers, more toe rings and ornate anklets for her feet. She reaches into the box for them. She looks into the mirror and smiles. Yes, she looks like a bride. Only the bridal basinga, the sacred thread around the forehead, is missing, but that cannot be helped.

Thimmakka reaches behind the mirror to the place where she keeps her small kunkuma pot. With precision, she puts her forefinger into the pot, takes the right amount of the bright red powder and draws a careful, small circle on her forehead. The banging on the wooden door of Bangari’s room has ceased. Chandru is heaving huge pathetic sobs now.