had no idea where it had come from, but it was dark and heavily coiled. She imagined it hanging neatly from the rafters, turned into a knot, a noose, a gallows.
‘Why do people say “a bolt of silk,” Mama?’ Alice asked, tugging at her hand, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Why do thunder and silk come in bolts?’
Sita didn’t reply and Alice’s chatter continued. Why, why, why? thought Sita bitterly. The ordinariness of every single day was more than she could stand.
First, they headed for Pettar and the sari shop. The sun was beginning to dry the mud as they dodged the garbage spilling out on to the roadside. Sita held her sari above her ankles with one hand and Alice with the other. Overhead the trees were alive with whistling bulbuls; bright yellow sunbirds. Alice stared upwards as she walked. Always after it rained she noticed the colours glowed more vividly and the air became scented with the smell of temple flowers.
‘Anay, look where you’re walking, Alice, please,’ her mother said, tugging at her hand. ‘There’s filth everywhere.’
The shops were opening their shutters again. Men in sarongs squatted on the ground, their bodies curved in long bent question marks; street sellers and beggars rubbed shoulders as the tiffin boys ran back to their kitchens with empty curry tins.
They turned towards the railway station, going deeper into Pettar where the silk merchants had their emporiums. May’s going-away sari was ready to be collected. Guilt filled Sita’s head, it stopped up her ears and filled her nose with its sweet sad scent. In spite of the disgrace Sita had brought to her family, May was getting married. No thanks to me, thought Sita, with a bitter smile. I’m being punished, she decided, this is my fate. All around the tropics teemed with life and colour; with the frantic hurry of rickshaw men’s feet, the grating sound of gears on antiquated London buses and the intermittent cries of the streets, while never far off, like a steady heartbeat, was the soft sound of the ocean. Sita heard none of it. A slow refrain played in her head: I should have died, I should have died, I should have died. Taking my shame with me. Removed myself from this place.
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