simply sat with his hands folded, staring into them as if into a deep well. Only Divya was an ally—a serious girl who Poornima had grown to like, but who had no voice, being the youngest, and was often shouted down.
But before Poornima could even turn to Divya, her mother-in-law was at her side, yanking her head back by her braid. “Ask forgiveness,” she growled. “Ask.” Poornima was so surprised she couldn’t get any words out, not even a scream. Her mother-in-law finally let go, and Poornima did ask forgiveness, but then, that night, as she was falling asleep, she thought, It was absurd of me. It was cowardly of me. I should’ve never asked for forgiveness when I’m not even sure I had anything to do with it. I don’t remember ever even seeing that silk shalwar. What did it mean to ask forgiveness, she wondered, not knowing the crime, or who committed it. It meant nothing, she realized. Nothing at all. And so she decided in that moment—decided, yes, decided, astonished that she could even do such a thing as decide—that she would never again ask forgiveness for a thing she didn’t do, for crimes she could in no way recall committing. And so she fell asleep smiling, and drifted into a dream.
After six months of marriage, the days took an even darker turn. Poornima’s father had been able to give them the first five thousand rupees at the wedding. He’d taken a loan from the weaving collective, at an exorbitant interest rate, but had been able to keep both of his looms, and even hired a boy—young, hardly able to reach the treadles—to work the second loom. But he still hadn’t managed to buy Kishore a scooter, nor had he any way to pay the remaining five thousand. Poornima would’ve known nothing about this, since she hardly had any contact with her father, had it not been for the fact that her in-laws began to mention it more and more. Mention? That wasn’t quite the right word. Hound was a better word. They began to hound her about it.
At first, Poornima didn’t even know they were talking about the five thousand. They were circumspect, and they would say things like, Some people. Some people are just too lazy to pay their debts, or, You can’t trust anyone, especially not the poor, the ones with daughters. Why should their bad luck cost us money? or, Liars—if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a liar. But after a few weeks, the grumbling became more pointed. While Poornima was eating dinner one night, after all the others had finished—first Kishore and her father-in-law, and then her mother-in-law and Aruna and Divya had to be served—her mother-in-law walked into the kitchen, where Poornima was sitting on the floor and eating, and said, “Did you get enough to eat, my dear?”
Poornima looked up at her in astonishment. My dear?
“It’s just as well,” she continued. “Eat your fill. You can live off of us. But who are we going to live off of?”
Poornima tried to talk to Kishore about it. She brought it up one night, after they’d climbed to their upstairs room. The nights were cooler now. It was January, and they’d had to switch out the thin sheets for the woolen blanket. The sky was a deep and distant blue; winter stars pierced it with cold indifference. Poornima stood on the terrace for a moment, looking out at the other houses in Namburu, most of them only thatched-roof huts like the one she’d grown up in. Golden lantern light spilled onto the dirt passageways between the huts, and there was the smell of woodsmoke, cooking fires setting rice to boil, round wheat pulkas browning directly over the flames. Poornima looked in the direction of Indravalli and knew this same cold night air must hang over Indravalli, too, this exact night air, probably, and yet she felt no kinship with it. No affection. It was as if the winter had turned the season of her heart, too, and left it filled only with smoke and distant, frozen stars.
Kishore asked her to come to the bed when she entered. He was lying on top of the covers. “Take off your blouse,” he said. Poornima took off her blouse and wrapped her pallu around her shoulders, though the shadowed curves of her breasts, her thin arms, could still be guessed through the fabric of her sari. “No,” he said, “take that off, too.”