Vairum detaches himself from the lacy, leafy papaya tree and returns to the doorway. The sun is behind him and Janaki cannot see his face. He turns to take his place beside his wife. On his forehead is the deeply imprinted double X of the papaya trunk’s bark-a wavy diamond with a half reflection on each side. The hourglass runs out as they complete the puja for a child. The papaya skin diamond melts from his forehead, as his diamond-dark eyes, too, melted briefly into something soft and hurt.

As the auspicious time dribbles to an end, Janaki jumps up and runs off to change into her uniform before her grandmother can object.

Her white shirt and blue skirt are starched as stiff, it seems, as her books. The buttons of the shirt are at the back, so she has to ask Sita for help doing them up. Sita deliberately buttons her wrong; Sivakami notices and makes her do it again, and then squats in the kitchen with a brass pot of yogourt rice. The children seat themselves in a semicircle around her and she feeds them their breakfast, dropping a mouthful of the mixture into each of their palms in turn as they eat.

When they finish, they run to the well to wash their hands, rinse their mouths and gather their things. Muchami secures Janaki’s books in their strap as she picks up her slate, writing stick and ink, and they run for the door.

He lifts her onto the cart. “Janaki-baby, go to the centre, away from the edge.”

He points and then stands, twisting his shoulder towel around a finger as Janaki crawls to the centre, moving her things in two trips. As the cart lurches around the corner, she seats herself in a puff of relief, and then looks up to see Muchami watching her from the veranda. She suddenly realizes he needs to do all his regular things today: go to his home, take a nap-how is he going to do all that without her? She had gotten so excited about going to school that she hadn’t considered the fact that she wouldn’t be at home.

She tries to stand but stumbles on a couple of other children. The last sight she has of her home is Muchami gesturing impatiently and yelling, “Sit! Sit!”

Muchami enters the garden (he had run through the house to help Janaki but, as a matter of course, doesn’t walk through the main hall), walks through the cowshed and into the courtyard.

“I suppose I’ll get the marketing done, Amma,” he calls to Sivakami. “Anything particular I should look for?”

“No. Whatever’s good.” She doesn’t look up from preparing the mid-morning meal. He doesn’t go, however, but continues standing in the courtyard, half out of sight, beyond the kitchen door. Sivakami stands to dump out the water in which she has been rinsing okra, and sees him. “I said, whatever’s good.”

He looks at the ground. He doesn’t understand how Sivakami could not feel as he does, bereft, though the course of her day is relatively unaltered by Janaki’s departure.

“You know, Mari and I have talked, sometimes, about adopting a child,” he tells her.

She slices the okra against the blade, tossing it into a pan. “I think that’s a good idea. No one should be without a child.”

“I think, maybe a little girl.”

“A girl? Why would you do that?” She doesn’t think she has ever heard of anyone adopting a girl. Childless Brahmins generally adopt some poor relative’s son, so that they themselves will have a son to perform their death rites. Muchami’s community’s customs are unknown to her, though. She suspects they may not have annual death rites; they barely even observe time the same way as Brahmins.

“You’re right,” he says hastily, unwinding his shoulder towel yet again from his sweaty palm. “I don’t know. I’ll go to market now.”

Sivakami shrugs. She has no idea what’s on his mind, but expects either he will tell her, or she will guess, in good time.

At the entrance to the schoolyard, Sita jumps off the cart and walks toward the school without looking back. Janaki finally figures out a way to pile everything on her slate and balance it as she walks, but she has to stop every few steps to look up and check where Sita is going.

They enter the school, a long mud building with six classrooms, their doors opening directly onto the yard. At one end are three offices, occupied by the headmistress and some lesser functionaries. Their doors open onto a hallway that traverses the width of the school, and opens onto the schoolyard at either end. There are only sixty girls in the school, so the first-, second- and third-standard students are together. Sita and Janaki will be in the same class.

“Miss, this is Janaki, Miss, my sister,” Sita mumbles to the teacher for form’s sake as she crosses to deposit her tiffin box in the coolest corner of the room.

It’s then that Janaki notices she is without her own lunch. Did she leave it in the cart? But no, it took her two trips to move her things, one for books and pen, a second for slate and ink. It must still be in the kitchen, where her grandmother leaves Laddu’s and Sita’s lunches after packing them. But she cannot take any more time to think about it. Sita has already taken her seat on the floor among the other third-standard girls. Janaki pivots from one side to another on her heels, trying not to upset her little stack of supplies, unsure as to where she should go. The teacher, Miss Mathanghi, points her toward the opposite side of the room, where eleven girls of roughly Janaki’s size and level of uncertainty are sitting. They all started school this month; three are starting today.

Miss Mathanghi, an ancient and dour twenty-five, waits for the shuffling and gossip to peak. The last girls are just entering as she launches into the morning’s prayer, some twelve couplets from the Bhagavad-Gita, which she bellows line by line, and which the girls yell back. She does this once through with the entire classroom in some semblance of chorus. She then sings out each line a second time, looking at the ceiling or out the window. At the end of the line, she points to a student, who must repeat it alone. Sita is among the first; she gets perhaps half of her line right. That is typical for her, but today she has an additional distraction: she is smiling a calculating smile at her sister, implying that Janaki will be chosen and that she should be scared.

Janaki is scared. One of her standard-mates is selected, a little girl like her, who has only begun school that day. She just gapes at the teacher, who stares back a second before rolling her eyes and pointing to a second-standard. Janaki feels herself petrifying and turning red; perhaps, she thinks, perhaps she can blend into the brick floor. Perhaps the teacher will see only an empty space, an empty uniform starched stiff enough to stand alone.

But there is the pointer, aimed at Janaki.

And Janaki responds, repeating the entire line perfectly. Or so it sounds to her, but then it always does. But yes, it’s true: the teacher is nodding, surprised, approving. She sings out the next line and the next, the final line of the prayer. She indicates Janaki for both of them. Janaki repeats them. She looks cautiously at Sita, expecting her sister to be shaking in triumphant hilarity while Janaki makes a fool of herself, but Sita is gaping at her jealously and looks away when Janaki turns to her.

The first class of the day for the youngest girls is arithmetic; the first exercise is writing the numerals one through ten. The teacher props a slate near the front of the classroom and writes, “1, 2, 3.” “Those of you who can, copy this. Those of you who can‘t, well, then we will know you can’t!”

Janaki thinks she can do this. The first figure on the board looks like a walking stick, the next an ear, with a dangling earring blowing out in the wind, the last like a bird, tipped sideways to round a corner in flight. She thinks the teacher has been too hasty in making the drawings and does her best to make each figure more realistic and accurate.