A story continuous...............

Sometimes at night I think that my husband is with me again, coming gently through the mists, and we are tranquil together. Then morning comes, the wavering grey turns to gold, there is a stirring within me as the sleepers awake, and hesoftly departs.

One by one they come out into the early morning sunshine, my son, my daughter, and Puli, the child I clung to who was not mine, and he no longer a child. Puli is with me because I tempted him, out of my desperation I lured him away from his soil to mine. Yet I have no fears now: what is done is done, there can be no repining. "Are you happy with me?" I said to him yesterday ---being sure of the answer. He nodded, not hesitating, but a little impatient. An old woman's foibles. A need for comfort.

But I am comforted most when I look at his hands. He has no fingers, only stubs, since what has been taken can never be given back, but they are clean and sound. Where the sores were, there is now pink puckered flest; his limbs are untouched. Kenny and Selvam bewteen them have kept my promise to him.

In the distance when it is a fine day and my sight is not too dim, I can see the building where my son works. He and Kenny, the young and the old. A large building, spruce and white; not only money has built it but men's hopes and pity, as I know who have seen it grow brick by brick and year by year.

My three sisters were married long before I was. Shanta first, a big wedding which lasted for many days, plenty of gifts and feasts, diamond earrings, a gold necklace, as befitted the daughter of the village headman. Paddmini next, and she too made a goodmatch and was married fittingly, taking jewels and dowry with her, but when it came to Thangam, only relations from our own villagecame to the wedding and not from the surrounding districts as thy had done before, and the only jewel she had was a diamond nose-screw.

"What for you," my mother would say, taking my face in her hands, "my last-born, my baby? Four dowries is too much for a mon to bear." "I shall have a grand wedding," I would say. "Such that everybody will remember when all else is a dream forgotten." (I had heard this phrase in a storyteller's tale.) "For is not my father head of the village?" I knew this pleased my mother, for she would at once laugh, and lose her look of worry. Once when I repeated this, my eldest brother overheard me, and he said sharply, "Don't speak like a fool, the headman is no longer of consequence. there is the Collector, who comes to these villages once a year, and to him is the power, and to those he appoints: not to the headman."

This was the first time I had ever heard that my father was of no consequence. It was as if a prop on which I leaned had been roughly kicked away, and I felt frightened and refused to believe him. But of course he was right, and by the time I came to womanhood even I had to acknowledge that his prestige was much diminished. Perhaps that was why they could not was find me a rich husband, and married me to a tenant farmer who was poor in everything but in love and care for me, his wife, whom he took at the age of twelve. Our relatives, I know, murmured that the match was below me; my mother herself was not happy, but I was without beauty and without dowry and it was the best she could do. "A poor match," they said, and not always uietly How little they knew, any of them!

A woman, they say, always remembers her wedding night. Well, maybe they do; but for me there are other nights I prefer to remember, sweeter, fuller, when I went to my husband matured in mind as well as in body, not as a paianed and awkward child as I did on that first night. And when the religious ceremonies had been completed, we left, my husband and I. How well I remember the day, and the sudden sickness that overcame me when the mment for departure came! My mother in the doorway, no tears in her eyes but her face bloated with their weight. My father standing a little i front of her, waiting to see us safely n our way. My husband, seated already on the saris next to him. Somehow I found myself also sitting in the cart, in finery, with downcast eyes. Then the cart began to move, lurching as the bullocks got awkwardly into rhythm, and I was sick. Such a disgrace for me...How shall I ever live it down? I remember thinking. I shall never forget...I haven't forgotten, but thememory is not sour. My husband soothed and calmed me.