“The ocean?” Poornima had never seen the ocean, and she imagined it to be just like a field—a field of rice, she thought—with ships in the distance instead of mountains, blue instead of green, and as for waves, she’d discussed them with a classmate once, when she was in the third class. “But what are they? What do they look like?” The other girl—who’d also never seen the ocean—said they were the water burping, and they looked like a cat when it’s stretching. A cat? Stretching? Poornima was skeptical. “Will you visit me?”
“I told you. It’s too far.”
“But, a train.”
Savitha laughed out loud. She held up a bit of capsicum. “You see this? You see this?” she said, indicating her full plate of rice and a fingertip’s worth of last year’s tomato pickle. “This is a feast. How do you think I will ever afford a train ticket?”
That night, Poornima lay on her mat and thought about Savitha. It was vaguely unsettling, but it seemed to her that she couldn’t possibly marry a man who lived too far away for Savitha to visit. So that, essentially, Savitha was more important than the man she would marry. Could that be true? How had this happened? Poornima couldn’t say. She thought about the fierceness that sometimes flooded Savitha’s eyes. She thought about the view of the temple from the window of her hut. She thought about her mixing rice and buttermilk with banana, and how, when she’d finally asked her for a bite, Savitha, with a wide grin, had rolled a bit of dripping rice into a ball between her fingers, and instead of handing it to her, she’d fed her. Raised the bite to Poornima’s mouth, so that she’d touched the very tip of her fingers with her tongue. As if she were a child. As Amma might’ve done. But with Savitha, there was no illness to mar the gesture, no dying; she was alive, more alive than anyone she’d ever known. She made even the smallest of life seem grand, and for Poornima, who had always ached for something more than the memory of a comb in her hair, more than the chiming of a blue clock, or a voice that she tried so often to conjure, watching Savitha, watching her delight, was like cultivating her own. And even in her daily duties—cooking, going to the well for water, washing dishes, scrubbing clothes, sitting for endless hours at the charkha—she found a sudden and glimmering satisfaction. Perhaps even joy. Though what surprised her most was that she could no longer imagine her life without her. Who had she talked to at meals before Savitha? What had she done on Sundays? Who had she cooked for? Her father, who was slow to notice most things, had said the previous evening, “That Savitha seems like a good girl. She’s a hard worker, that’s for sure.” Then he’d turned back to his tobacco and said, “Shouldn’t let a girl like that run around. Should get her married. How old is she? Too old to run around, I’d say. No telling.”
No telling, Poornima repeated to herself. No telling what?
Her father looked at her. “They’ll be here tomorrow. Probably in the afternoon.”
“Who?”
“The boy from Repalle. His family.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Here.” Her father handed her a few rupees. “Send your brother out for snacks in the morning. Pakoras, maybe.” Poornima stared at him. “Don’t just stand there. Take it.”
In the morning, when Poornima told her, Savitha only smiled. “It’ll come to nothing,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Because these things always do.”
“What things?”
Savitha pointed at the sky. “Things that are not ordained. That are broken before they ever begin.”
“But—they’re on their way. Gopi is out buying pakoras.”
She smiled again. “A few mornings ago, I was on my way to your house. I was crossing Old Tenali Road, you know, where all the lorries pass on their way to the highway. As I was crossing by the paan shop, I heard a thump. More like a quick thud. I didn’t think much of it. But I did turn around to look, and when I did, I saw an owl on the road. It had obviously been hit. One of its wings looked wrong, just wrong. Do you know what I mean? It looked dead. Or sleeping. But no, it was awake, Poori. Awake. More awake than anything I’ve ever seen. It was not making a sound. No