Chapter Eighteen
O clouds! Drench Venkata with your calming water,
tell Narayana who entered me, who burgled my soul,
I am empty as a wood-apple sucked dry by a gnat
Nacciyar Tirumoli 8:6
His name was Vasur. We were discreet, the days we met in Srivilliputtur, because eyes were in the walls of houses attached to the temple and it was common knowledge by then that this white woman coming to their town had a husband. Tongues, I imagined, were already wagging about what I was doing here alone. No Tamil wife ventured anywhere without her husband, and if not him she had a chaperone. If the chaperone was a man, it was her brother or uncle, and if it was a woman—well, women were the very best at keeping each other in check.
Vasur, it turned out, knew Srivilliputtur well. He had come here as
