the rush ends, I’ll be able to make yours.” She was trying to cheer her, but Poornima only looked back at her sadly. Ramayya arrived every evening at teatime and proclaimed defeat. One night, she told Savitha, she’d stood behind the door of the hut and listened. “No one will have her. No one,” he declared to her father. “They’ve all heard. The minute they hear her name, your name, they shake their heads and say they’re not interested. And dark, on top of it. Word travels, after all. No, we might have to increase the dowry. Some poor fool will need the money.”
Savitha said to her, “Come over tomorrow. I want to show you something.” When she did, Savitha showed her the bales of indigo thread for her sari. “It’s not completely paid for, but the collective gave me credit.” She held it against Poornima’s skin. “Like the night sky,” she said, smiling. “And you the full moon.” Poornima, too, managed a smile. She offered her tea, and when Poornima refused, Savitha turned to a corner of the hut and said, “Nanna, do you want some?”
Poornima swung around. There was an old man sitting in the corner of the room. Huddled. He’d been quiet all this time, invisible. There seemed to be movement, and Poornima thought to say, No, please don’t get up on my account, but then she saw that he was trembling. Then there came a grunt, maybe the broken half of a word, and, as if in response, Savitha poured out some tea into a steel cup. She went over to her father and cradled his head as she held the cup to his lips. He caught Poornima’s eye. He said, in a hoarse whisper, but strong, stronger than Poornima would’ve thought possible in a man who looked so weak, “You see that? You see the temple?” He was pointing out of the small window, at Indravalli Konda. “They can see us, just as we can see them. I’ve looked. I’ve stood on the steps of the temple and looked. The door of this shithole looks just as mysterious, just as inviting as that door does from here.”
“Drink,” Savitha said.
The old man—too old to be Savitha’s father; he looked more like her grandfather—said, “I did too much of that. Too much, don’t you think?”
Savitha tipped the glass. A drop of tea dribbled out. He pulled his hand out from under the blanket, instinctively, and Poornima stepped back in horror. It was a bundle of broken twigs, the fingers smooth but twisted. Savitha saw the look on Poornima’s face. “Joint disease,” she said.
“That’s not right. Not joint disease. That’s too easy. You see this here?” He raised his hand into the air and sunlight touched its very tip, like the top branches of a tree. “This is freedom. This is the human spirit, perfected. If we were all born like this there would be no war. We would live like brothers, afraid to touch each other. Do you know, Savitha, what I saw the other day? And what is your name?” When Poornima told him, he said, “Do you know there are some places in the world where people’s names have no meanings? It’s true. Can you imagine? What kind of places are they? Empty, that’s what I say. Empty and sad. A name without meaning, it’s like having night without day. There are places like that, too, I’ve heard. Now, what was I saying? Savitha, the tea’s cold,” he said, laughing. “You see. I talk too much. Far too much. Mondhoo kept me quiet. Mondhoo kept the words quiet, chained to a tree. Oh, yes! What I saw the other day. Why, now I can’t remember.” He laughed, copiously and happily, like a child.
Poornima liked him. She didn’t care what he’d meant to say, nor did she have any idea what he meant by words being chained to a tree, but she liked him because he was so unlike her own father. Unlike Ramayya, unlike any man she’d ever met. She forgot, then, and for the entire walk home, that she was dark, that she was unmarriageable, that there was not enough money for her dowry, that there was a poverty even greater than her own.
* * *
Ramayya was jubilant when he came over the following week. He nearly danced through the door. It was the beginning of May. The wells were dry. The streams were choked with dust. The level of the Krishna was so