It was four years before I returned to India. Our two children duly arrived, both daughters, just as Rajdurai Dikshithar had said, and inevitably other priorities took over. I continued to write to Mala and her family, exchanging news at Christmas and Diwali. In the interim, Punnidah finally got married to a young engineer from Tirukaddiyur, and they moved to the industrial city of Coimbatore in the north of Tamil Nadu. For us for the moment there seemed little prospect of an early return to the south. We felt our children were too young to be subjected to the vagaries of Chidambaram’s water supply and the cooking at the Hotel Tamil Nadu, let alone the danger of mosquito-borne diseases out in the countryside.
Not long before our firstborn’s first birthday, Mala wrote asking us to go to celebrate the occasion in her house. ‘I have prayed to Lord Nataraja for her long life and happiness,’ she wrote. ‘I would like to have her first birthday celebrations in India in my house. We will do ceremony of putting on her earring at Vaithisvarancoil temple.’
Life is constantly fraught with dangers in traditional Tamil society. On any station bookstall or bus stand you can pick up booklets which enumerate the dangerous times and psychic perils for the first sixteen years of life, starting with day one and going month by month and year by year right up to maturity. But passing the first year is the major hurdle – perhaps because in the old days so many poor children never made it that far. Tamil families still make much of it. It is not just a matter, as with us, of the naming. There is also the first cutting of the hair, the first feeding with cow’s milk, the first seeing of the sun and moon, the seeing of the first cow, the first giving of solid food (rice): all these are accompanied by special rituals. Then, on the first birthday (or more precisely on an auspicious day under her natal star around the time of the first anniversary), the child is ceremonially bathed, given new clothes and an earring; the proper ceremonies are performed for long life, good health and success.
‘So when she is one year old, you must come!’ Mala’s letter ended. ‘I hope very much to see her very soon, to watch her play in my house and hear her speak and sing. She is my first granddaughter! We are awaiting news of your arrival anxiously. Please write to me the date and I will come to the airport in Madras. Yours affectionately.’
I was touched more than I can say by her open-hearted efforts to coopt us into her world, but we declined her invitation; we were unduly cautious, I see now, but we feared our unruly one-year-old could only get into trouble in Chidambaram’s dusty streets.
Then, a year later, Mala wrote saying that Sarasu was hoping to marry before the end of the year, if a suitable match could be made. The marriage was provisionally set for November. I took the chance of a short break and flew to India with wedding presents, photographs and letters, intending only to stay in Chidambaram for two or three weeks. After an overnight stop in Bombay, I reached Madras on a mid-October afternoon. It was a balmy end-of-summer day and the city was bathed in golden sunlight and saturating heat as I took a taxi from the airport to the city centre. On the hot leather back seat of the Ambassador, the sweat ran down my arms and my shirt was soon as wet as a dishcloth. ‘The monsoon will be coming shortly,’ said the driver. ‘There have been water shortages everywhere this summer. Everywhere is so dry, tanks are empty and people are becoming desperate: everyone now is waiting for the first signs of rain.’