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very quiet voices against the background noise of traffic.
    “Taking very long time,” Kamala hisses.
    “Taking longer every day,” Jodhi whispers, sadly.
    Everyone is feeling very sorry for Jodhi now that Appa has ruined her life. They marvel at her courage in the face of adversity.
    At last Appa comes out and moves up and down this row of dutiful daughters. First he stares at the top of Jodhi’s head as she pours water over his hand. Then he looks at the top of
Kamala’s head as she dispenses and receives the soap which he jiggles around in one hand. Then he looks at the top of Jodhi’s head once more as she pours water again. Finally he looks
at the top of Pushpa’s head as she dries him with the towel. It is a solemn process.
    The tops of my children’s heads are beautiful…
He would like to touch their cheeks lovingly, but daren’t. It would make him weep again.
    “Appa,” says Leela, coming out of the kitchen in her school uniform as she hands Jodhi a stiffly ironed and starched shirt, “Mr Murugesan is come.”
    Swami nods.
    Jodhi hands the shirt to her father, who puts it on awkwardly. She itches to do the buttons up, but Swami does it by himself. He is halfway through when he reminds himself that she has lost her
happiness because of him;
let the girl put my shirt on me if she wants to.
    “You girls,” Swami says, when she’s finished. “What,” he says, “what when,” he tries, “when what.”
    “Appa?”
    “College?”
    “Yes Appa, going to college today.”
    “Attending practicals,” Pushpa confides.
    “Good girl,” says Swami.
    “No college for me Appa,” Kamala says. “Staying here with you only, Appa.”
    “Good girl. Hurry three,” he tells Pushpa. “To, through – over,” he tries. Hurry up is what he was aiming for.
    Inside the bungalow, Amma is speaking on the phone. Something about the way she is saying “Okay” and “Very good” and “Very happy” and “I will do the
needful” and “Most kindly of you” and “Yes yes we will fix it without delay most certainly” is entering their minds as significant, and drawing them inside.
    “Rest assured,” says Amma, smiling anxiously as she speaks, “we are most happy to hear this news, very happy.”
    Inside, Appa greets Murugesan with a nod as everyone gathers around Amma.
    “I don’t know how to thank you,” Amma trills, on the point of tears. “Such a good boy! Yes very soon. Goodboy! – I mean, Goodbye!” she says, laughing
girlishly.
    She puts the receiver down, then picks it up again to polish it on the edge of her sari, trying not to cry as all the girls except Jodhi beg her to tell them the news. She replaces the receiver
back in its cradle, and gently drapes a little cloth over it.
    “God is doing this for you, Jodhi,” she says at last. “Boy’s family want to visit again, even after everything that happened, even though a white man fell on
Appa.”
    “
Didn’t—
” Appa blurts wearily, but no one takes the slightest bit of notice. Jodhi’s hand is clamped over her mouth in shock, and her three sisters are
exclaiming “Ayyo-yo-yooooooooooo!” over and over again.
    “Boy is wanting this most particularly,” Amma says, “he is insistent, so Mother and Father have finally agreed, despite the descent of the snow-faced sky demon.”
    “Very happy news,” Murugesan says, as Swami burns in shame to be the obstacle that has occasioned such a concession.
    “God is all-powerful,” Amma says huskily, knowing that this development is an example of the all-encompassing protection, the legendary boons, for which Lord Murugan is famous.
“Go!” she barks at Leela, fiddling on a shelf for twenty rupees, “run to the market before school and buy three coconuts!” Later she will go to the temple and make an
offering of them.

 
4
    That is all I am these days, a passenger escorted from this place to that place by people who have no interest in what I say or think…
From his passenger