A Daughter's Courage

by Renita D'Silva

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

How much would you sacrifice to save your family? 1929. When a passionate love affair threatens to leave Lucy in disgrace, she chooses a respectable marriage over a life of shame. With her husband, coffee-plantation-owner James, she travels to her new home in India. Everything in India is new to Lucy, from the jewel-coloured fabrics to the exotic spices. When her path crosses that of Gowri, a young woman who tends a temple, Lucy is curious to find out more about her, and the events that lead her to live in isolation from her family… Now. With her career in tatters and her heart broken, Kayva flees from bustling Mumbai to her home town. A crumbling temple has been discovered in a village nearby, and with it letters detailing its tragic history – desperate pleas from a young woman called Gowri. As Kavya learns of Gowri and Lucy’s painful story, she begins to understand the terrible sacrifices that were made and the decision the two women took that changed their lives forever. Can the secrets of the past help Kavya to rebuild her life?

Release date: May 31, 2017

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 446

Sample

Kavya hears the landline ringing as she puffs up the stairs to the flat – she recognises it as hers from the ringtone. Loud and strident. It will most likely be her mother. (Fitting then, the ringtone.) Everyone else has her mobile number. She considers leaving it, taking her time up the stairs. She’s not quite ready to have the conversation she knows she must with her mother. But… what if it’s an emergency? What if something’s happened?

She sprints up, cursing for the millionth time, the fact that she lives on the fifth floor, cursing Balu, the lift attendant who keeps promising to call the engineer to fix the broken (permanently, it seems) elevator and then sits about smoking and gossiping with the gatekeeper. He pulls a suitably sad face and shrugs his shoulders when Kavya grumbles to him, scratching his head and drawling, languidly, ‘Engineer is coming, naa, give him some time. This time of year is very busy for him.’

As Kavya pauses to take a breath – noting that the phone has stopped ringing and feeling stupidly relieved – she thinks back to the several rants she has voiced at the tenants’ meetings, trying time and again to rouse the residents against Mr Nandkishore, president of the Tenants’ Association, who is in cahoots with the landlord and lets things slide.

What a waste of energy that I could have put to better use!

She has tried talking to the other residents when passing them on the stairs, attempting to make them enraged enough to dislodge Mr Nandkishore. She even tried to bribe them with those divine cream buns from Hazmat Bakery once – the last time she’s spending good money on them. They agree with her, but when push comes to shove, side with Mr Nandkishore – who, she has since found out, makes sure they get certain concessions, including leeway when paying the rent. Which is why they are lukewarm towards her righteous anger, lethargic despite the perpetually broken lift, despite having to climb endless flights of stairs.

But this is the absolute limit, she thinks as she shifts her shopping from one hand to another. She cannot remember the last time the lift was working.

‘Tell the landlord I have exposed him on that blog that rates rental properties,’ she raged the last time she saw Mr Nandkishore.

‘Arre, who will listen to your lone dissenting voice when everyone else is happy?’ Mr Nandkishore had said with a smirk.

‘They’re not happy. They keep quiet because you bribe them,’ she had spat.

‘Move, if you’re not happy,’ Mr Nandkishore had said, grinning, expertly skirting the issue of the bribes.

But Kavya likes her flat. Aside from the fact that it is on the fifth floor, it is perfectly suited to her needs. She likes its central location, likes that it is a two-minute walk away from the train station. Besides, why should she move? It would be accepting defeat; it would be bowing down and giving in.

She has always told herself and anyone who will listen, plus her mother, who won’t, that she will live her life on her terms only – not her mother’s or Mr Nandkishore’s or the landlord’s.

But now, after the events of the past few weeks, she’s not so sure…

She pauses on the stairs and closes her eyes, trying to chase away the upset that swamps her.

It’s over. You’ve survived. Pick yourself up now and look ahead.

‘You are a warrior.’ She hears her beloved grandmother’s voice in her ear, pictures her eyes twinkling with pride when she says it and is struck by a sudden pang to see her, speak with her, explain her situation. Her grandmother would understand and sympathise. Unlike her mother…

‘You were born screaming. Ready for a fight. A tomboy. Hai! What shall I do with you?’ Her mother’s vociferous tones push away her grandmother’s soft, soothing presence inside her head. Her mother, eyes flashing fire, hitting her forehead with her palm. ‘You should be a lawyer, the way you argue with me.’

Which is precisely why Kavya hasn’t become a lawyer. Or a doctor. Or an engineer. Or pursued ‘something respectable’ – she hears those two words in her mother’s voice, spiked with disappointment.

The phone has started up again. She charges up the stairs – as fast as she can, which is not fast at all. Everything, including the gym, has been on hold since she—

Oh God, she cannot think about it, not now when the phone call is most likely her mother. It will require all of her energy just to field her mother’s incessant prying once Kavya informs her of her decision.

Out of breath, she fumbles with the key and pushes open the door to her flat.

‘Hello,’ she pants, her palms hurting from where the shopping bags have dug into the flesh. She looks at the bags, by the door where she unceremoniously plonked them as she came in, and sighs at the spreading puddle underneath them. The eggs? Or the tomatoes that she spent an age selecting, making sure she got the juiciest ones, fancying a salad to chase away the headache that’s been rippling through her skull?

Her mood is not improved when she hears her mother’s voice yelling, ‘Is that you, Kavya?’

She’s tempted to yell right back, ‘Who else could it be?’

‘Kavya?’ her mother’s voice thunders down the line.

Why does her mother always shout when speaking on the phone?

‘Yes, Ma. I’m right here.’

‘What’s the matter? Why are you huffing and puffing, sounding like you have a herd of elephants chasing you?’ Her mother chuckles. ‘Speaking of elephants, you’ll never believe what…’

Now that Kavya has discerned from her mother’s familiar greeting, her tone of voice, that nothing catastrophic has occurred, irritation buds, chafing, overflowing, despite all her resolutions, after every altercation with her mother, to be nice the next time.

‘I sound breathless because I am! I ran all the way up the stairs, thinking it was an emergency. How many times have I told you not to keep calling unless it’s urgent, Ma?’

She hears the petulant whine in her voice and bites her lip. Why does her mother reduce her to a whinging thirteen-year-old every single time? Why does Kavya let her?

‘What do you mean “don’t keep calling”? If I don’t, then I might never get to speak to you, what with your “busy” life.’

How can her mother make a perfectly ordinary word like ‘busy’ sound so obscene, so worthy of disdain?

‘I want to speak to my only daughter at least once a week, thank you very much. I think that constitutes “urgent” in my book…’

Kavya sighs. Her mother is nothing if not tenacious. If she has made up her mind to speak to Kavya, she will, even if it means having to keep ringing on and off all day and into the evening until Kavya gives in and answers the phone.

Kavya closes her eyes and leans against the wall as she catches her breath. She wants to strip down to her underwear and lie down under the fan. She wants to open the fridge, pull out the bottles that survived last night’s binge and down them to drown her troubles.

She wants to hide in the folds of her grandma’s voluminous sari skirts like she used to as a child when she was wanted by her mother for some infraction or other, breathing in the scent of stale talc, old celebrations and mothballs, comfort and sweat. It was unfortunate that wanting to be with her grandmother meant that she had to also endure her mother’s censure emanating off her in chagrin-scented waves; her mother’s smell when Kavya was around: disapproval and heartache.

What would you do if you found out the truth, Ma?

She wants to run away from her mother’s forceful voice in her ear, back down the stairs, out into the bustle and throb of humanity, and keep walking until she comes to the sea, letting the warm waves lap over her feet and ankles, her thighs, her waist.

‘I have elephants on my mind,’ her mother says.

Outside, the world moves on, while in her apartment, her supposed haven, Kavya is catapulted back into childhood and young adulthood. No matter how far she goes, she can never outrun her mother’s upset, her displeasure in her. And it is only going to get worse when Kavya tells her ma that she has decided this career is not for her – the bland statement hiding a truth her mother must never know as she will never be able to handle it.

Kavya shudders, tempted to put down the phone, but her mother would just ring again. And keep on ringing. Not accepting no for an answer.

Once, in the midst of a raging argument, Kavya had unplugged the phone and her mother had called old Mr Singh next door who, despite being short of hearing, heard Kavya’s mother’s summons, so insistent was her stubbornness in getting hold of her daughter. How she had Mr Singh’s number, Kavya doesn’t know. But if there is one thing Kavya has learned, it is not to underestimate her mother when she wants something. This is why it gives Kavya particular pleasure that so far, she has managed to resist her mother’s attempts to slot her into a neat little box – to shape Kavya according to her ambitions and desires for her.

So far yes, but… She sighs deeply, then pulls herself together. I might be defeated but I am not giving in. I have no choice but to go back, yes, but it is only a temporary measure until I figure out what to do…

In the small strip of land generously called ‘the garden’ five storeys below, the mali is half-heartedly tending to the plants, the hibiscus like open red palms bestowing blessings, the sunny smiles of marigolds. The watchman at the gate waves a car in and manoeuvres another, wanting to leave, into waiting in a corner, while at the same time talking non-stop to Balu the lift attendant, who is smoking perfect rings into the sky as he watches the drama unfold. The man in the waiting car puts his head out of the window and curses at the gatekeeper (Kavya can’t hear anything from up here, even with the windows wide open, but she can guess what is being said). The gatekeeper remains unperturbed by the driver’s agitation, pausing in his directing to guffaw, bony shoulders shaking with mirth, presumably at something Balu has said.

Outside the gates, by the roadside, a boy skips in the puddles left behind from the morning’s rain. Rickshaws honk, cars horn, each trying to edge past the other, none of them giving an inch. Chickens from the slums by the pipeline dance on to the road, making the creeping traffic even slower, the drivers even edgier – the exhaust- and petrol-scented air rent by the cacophony of horns and swearing that is the soundtrack to Mumbai’s streets, faint strains of which drift in through the windows of Kavya’s flat.

Cows nudge their way through the traffic, the mess of sweaty, shouting drivers and overcooked passengers. The children from the slums sit astride the pipeline inside which some of them sleep at night and, plucking at their raggedy clothes, their matted hair, they chant songs in tune to the honks – Kavya knows this because she has heard them while walking to and from work. She watches their mouths move, their grimy, hunger-ravaged faces alight with smiles as they note the ever-increasing frustration of the stalled drivers.

The paan and chaat stall by the gate to her apartment complex does brisk business. A woman shoves a whole panipuri into her mouth while keeping a phone pressed to her ear. Men stand outside the small shop selling tandoori chicken and egg bhurji, eating and gossiping and holding on to their paper plates as they jump out of the way of cars spraying streams of dirty water as the traffic finally starts moving. Pedestrians check watches, talk into their phones, walk to work, walk away from work.

Work. She doesn’t want to think about her (disastrous) acting career, although her mind hovers, dredging up the humiliation.

All she ever wanted was to get away, do something under her own steam, something not mapped out for her. She wanted to break the mould, not lead a boring, conventional life like her parents.

Well, you have definitely done that! a voice in her head chimes.

She thinks of this morning, serving tea and coffee to tourists – something her mother doesn’t know about, her working in a café while waiting for her career to take off. Sweaty tourists, wiping their faces and commenting on the heat and talking about the sudden shower and asking her for tea and then no, make it mango juice instead, and leaving her five measly rupees as tip.

‘Kavya?’ her mother shouts in her ear.

‘I’m here, Ma.’

‘You’ll never guess who I bumped into at the post office…’

Kavya sighs. Here it comes, the first point on her mother’s agenda. She imagines a list in her mother’s big, bossy handwriting: 1) Make Kavya realise what she is missing out on because of her dog-headed wilfulness; try to spur her on by offering a little competition.

Her mother is waiting, breathing impatiently down the line, and so Kavya says, ‘Who?’ Knowing her mother will tell her anyway, whether she wants to hear whatever titbit she is about to offer or not.

‘Your high-school classmate, Vidya. Remember her? Short. Bespectacled. Unruly hair. Nowhere near as pretty or as bright as you…’

‘Ma—’

‘But now, she is a jet-setting software engineer, working at a multinational company in Bangalore. Regularly travels all over the world.’

‘Good for her.’

‘And she’s married to a doctor and is pregnant! Glowing. She looks amazing.’

Kavya shuts her eyes tight against the tears that threaten, salty heat in her mouth. She has shed enough tears. Move on. Look forward. Her chant, her mantra.

‘She’s visiting her parents, which is how I bumped into her…’ her mother is saying.

‘Ma, I don’t want to get married. Not quite yet…’ Kavya says, wearily. They’ve had versions of this conversation too many times to count.

‘Who said anything about getting married? I was just telling you about your school friend… Although, if you just said the word, there are a few eligible men I’ve had my eye on who would be perfect for you…’

‘Ma—’

‘You’re not getting any younger. Soon, all the good men will be taken and you will be left with nothing. And after thirty it is much harder to have children, you know. Infertility increases. There’s more risk of children being born unhealthy.’

A tear escapes, travelling down her cheek. Kavya furiously rubs it away, her anger at herself transferring to her mother. ‘Ma, for the last time, I don’t want to get married or have children just yet…’

Unless it’s with the right person and I thought… Oh…

‘Then when? Is it too much to expect grandchildren from my only daughter before I wither and die?’

If only you knew…

‘Ma, I cannot think of marriage or children at the moment. I’m still figuring out what to do with my life!’

A pause. Then, ‘I thought this was why you are in Mumbai, so far away from us. Because acting is what you want to do with your life.’

Kavya takes a deep breath. She might as well say it now and be done with it. Although all she’s planning to tell her mother is that her acting career is over and she’s coming home, she feels horribly unprepared. But then, how do you prepare for this, especially with a mother such as hers? ‘Ma, I’m glad you called… I was going to call you anyway.’

‘Ha! That would be the day! How many times since you moved to Mumbai have you voluntarily called home, tell me?’ And then, her voice lowering a notch, worry beading through it, ‘Why? What’s happened? Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’ I’m not.

As if her mother has read her mind, she asks, ‘Have you been ill?’

Oh Ma, I have. Desperately… Only not in the way you think. ‘No, but…’

‘Do you have enough money?’

Kavya is ambushed by the annoyance that flares so quickly where her mother is concerned. Now she’s started to tell her, she just wants to get it over with. ‘Ma, can you let me finish—’

‘Ah, there she goes, blaming me again! To think of all we have done for you…’

‘Oh God, not again with the emotional blackmail—’

‘What emotional blackmail? I’m just stating the truth…’

Her mother sounds suitably hurt. Kavya pictures her all-too-familiar pout and sighs again. She seems to constantly vacillate between guilt and frustration when talking to her mother. After taking another deep breath she says, in a placatory voice, ‘Look, you don’t need to persuade me—’

‘As if I can persuade you to do anything! When I call, why do you assume that I want you to do something? Can’t I just call to chat to my daughter?’ Her mother’s voice rises to a falsetto.

Ha! Her mother calls with one goal only: to convince Kavya to ‘give up your madness and come home’ – her words, delivered in an uncompromising voice, as if stating an inviolable fact, at some point during every conversation, which only makes Kavya more determined to stay right where she is.

‘Anyway, what don’t I need to persuade you about?’ Her mother’s voice keen now, all pretence of hurt brushed off.

‘I… I was thinking…’ Oh God, this is excruciating. ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that acting is not the right career for me.’ She says it defiantly, her voice too loud.

Silence.

Kavya has achieved the impossible and managed to render her mother speechless for more than a minute.

‘Ma?’ She leans against the wall and closes her eyes as she waits for the verbal volley her mother is preparing to lob.

‘You…’ Her mother sounds unsure at first, then, all in a rush: ‘This is what we’ve been telling you all this while! You would have known this sooner if you weren’t so obstinate, if you had listened to us.’

‘That’s right, Ma, rub it in, why don’t you?’ Her voice trembles and she despises herself for this show of weakness.

‘Kavya,’ her mother’s voice soft, her empathy hurting more than her nagging, the tears Kavya has tried to hold back running freely down her cheeks. ‘It’s a tough industry to break into—’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Kavya’s tone is sharp to hide her upset. ‘Why do you think I’m giving up?’ She hates saying this. Hates it. She who mulishly never gives up even when it is the only option (as her mother likes to remind her time and again; not meaning it as a compliment either).

She wants to shout the truth, tell her mother that she did break into the seemingly impenetrable world of Bollywood, that she was well on her way to making a success of this career she had chosen for herself, until she made one bad decision and it all crumbled around her…

‘You could have saved yourself time and heartbreak if—’ her mother begins, and then stops as if realising she has said too much again. It must take all of her considerable willpower to not finish that sentence and Kavya feels a sudden rush of affection for her. ‘Anyway, what’s done is done.’ Her mother’s voice is brisk. ‘So you’re definitely packing up and coming home?’

Kavya looks around the flat – her home for the last few years, the place that has witnessed her cloud-tasting highs and bone-crushing lows, and, recently, her hurt, her anguish and her heartbreak. She looks out of the window at her own little slice of the city she has come to love, vast and busy and alive. She thinks of the decision she’s arrived at, finally, a decision that has loomed over her, that she has agonised over and postponed – to give up, go home, although every instinct screams for her to stay and fight.

But…

There’s no way she can win this. Nagesh is too powerful, knows too many people.

The audition two nights ago was the last straw. The director, a friend of Nagesh’s with whom they had dined many times, had taken one look at her, a lip-curling sneer that said it all, and called, ‘Next!’

It had taken all of her strength not to yell at him and make a scene – it would only serve to make her look deranged. Instead she had kept her head up high as she walked away, the long line of wannabe actresses staring at her and whispering among themselves. She knew that by the time she was on the metro home, everyone in that line would know her story. A cautionary tale for all of them.

But then she had heard so many such tales herself when she was starting out and they hadn’t stopped her…

The industry, the well-oiled machine that is Bollywood, has closed up around Nagesh, shutting her out, and that is that.

She shuts her eyes, takes a deep breath. ‘Yes. I am coming home.’

‘Good.’ Her mother’s voice sounds satisfied, as if she has orchestrated all of this herself. ‘You’ve seen sense at last and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Your ajji needs you.’

‘Ajji, why? Has something happened to her?’ A sliver of panic threading up her spine. Ajji. Kavya’s ally, her cheerleader and staunchest supporter.

‘She’s fine. But you know all the hoo-ha that’s been happening over in Doddanahalli?’

‘Doddanahalli? Where’s…’ Then, as the memory of coffee plants stretching into the distance nudges her, ‘That village we stay at on the way to Da’s…’

‘Yes, that very one.’

‘What hoo-ha?’

‘The elephant rampage.’

‘What? Did you just say elephant—?’

‘Never mind listening to me. Haven’t you been watching the news?’

‘Doddanahalli has made the national news?’ A tiny village, no more than a cluster of shops flanking the road.

‘Yes! Where have you been?’

Getting drunk, trying to forget myself. The thought of saying it aloud and hearing the shock in her mother’s voice makes her smile.

‘Are you very upset about having to leave there, Kukki?’ her mother asks, her voice gentle.

Hearing her childhood nickname and the tenderness in her mother’s voice brings a lump to Kavya’s throat.

‘I’m fine, Ma,’ she mumbles, although she definitely isn’t, for she feels an urge to reach down the telephone line to her mother and bury her face and her woes in her shoulder, like she used to do at family functions when she was very little, taking comfort from playing with strands of her mother’s hair, the smell of coconut oil and security. Her mother would hold her tight, knowing Kavya was tired of meeting all the numerous aunts and uncles and that her cheeks hurt from where they had pinched them, all those fleshy, sweaty aunts sporting leering orange mouths dripping like vampires (she eventually discovered that it was just paan – harmless – but that was much later) and uncles who smelt sour and did not smile at all.

When did that change? When did Kavya stop being the little girl who could look up at her mother in a certain way and her mother would know exactly what she wanted, read her mind and offer the solace she needed?

As Kavya grew up and became independent (‘I’m not Kukki, my name is Kavya. K. A. V. Y. A!’), first refusing to wear the clothes, the salwars and ghagras that her mother chose for her, and then refusing to go to the functions altogether, and the endless arguments started, her father hiding behind his newspaper, her grandmother the gentle arbitrator, perhaps it was then…

‘Are you sure?’ her mother’s voice still tender and uncharacteristically soft. Ironically, even though she is softer and thus harder to hear, it makes Kavya feel as if her mother is closer, right beside her, almost.

‘Yes, Ma,’ she says and realises with some surprise that her voice sounds almost as tender as her mother’s. ‘Now tell me what’s happened—’

Her mother doesn’t need much urging. ‘You know the coffee plantation resort on the outskirts of Doddanahalli where we stay overnight?’

Kavya pictures the sprawling hotel that was the plantation owner’s residence during colonial rule, with spacious rooms looking out on to manicured lawns and the coffee estate beyond. They always stop there on the way to and from her father’s ancestral home in Coorg. She loves to walk among the tall coffee plants, the plump, lush beans turning from green to red, some yellow, the taste of burgeoning life with the bitter undertone of ripening coffee. ‘Yes.’

‘You know there’s a jungle surrounding it?’

‘How can I not? You always warn me not to go into the jungle when I set out on my walk.’

‘With good reason, as it happens. One morning last week, a wild elephant got separated from its herd, and went on a rampage, right across the plantation. It was finally caught and reunited with its herd – not before it caused significant damage, though. And then the men cataloguing the destruction saw something gleaming in the foliage across the road from the plantation. You know, where the jungle encroaches onto the fields. We drive by there.’

Kavya can picture it. Driving out of the plantation gates and joining the road, the jungle on one side, giving way to fields on the other. ‘Yes. What was gleaming?’

‘You’ll never guess!’ Her mother can’t keep the thrill from her voice.

‘Tell me then.’ Her excitement, throbbing down the line, is contagious.

Her mother does love to narrate a tale. She makes a production of telling a story. No wonder, then, that Kavya chose acting over the more sedate professions like engineering and medicine that her mother was pushing her towards – she takes after her.

Kavya had put forward this argument when announcing her wish to move to Mumbai and try her hand at acting, but of course it didn’t wash.

Her mother had been devastated. She had also been scandalised. ‘Acting! That’s for flighty girls! How will we get you married?’

She had ranted and threatened to disown Kavya and, when that didn’t work, begged and pleaded. When that didn’t work either, Kavya’s mother had used the biggest weapon in her arsenal, one that hadn’t failed her yet: emotional blackmail. She had gone on a hunger strike. For a woman who loved food and feeding, it was the ultimate sacrifice.

She had sat on the floor in the front room, refusing to eat, hitting her head and sobbing to everyone who visited – and of course everyone had turned up to watch the spectre of Laxmi being driven to fasting by her wayward daughter.

But Kavya was just as tenacious and she had not budged, not this time. The fast lasted for four days.

Kavya’s father took to visiting his friend Chandra after work to avoid the stalemate between his wife and daughter. ‘Plus, for the first time since I married your mother, there was no food in the house,’ he confided to Kavya later. ‘And – please don’t tell your mother this – Chandra’s wife is the best cook in town. She felt sorry for me; she kept plying me with home-made snacks. This way I could at least have a full stomach before I returned to the war zone that was our house at the time.’

On the fifth day, Ajji had intervened. ‘Laxmi, eat. No point starving yourself when Kavya is set on what she wants to do.’

And, with Kavya’s mother’s defences weakened by hunger, Kavya had got her way.

‘Your ajji spoils you,’ her mother had shouted through a mouth full to bursting with laddoos. ‘Go on then, ruin your future. Only don’t come crying to us when it is too late.’ Her chin wobbling perilously, even as she stuffed her mouth with cashew barfi.

Ajji had patted her daughter’s back. ‘Everyone needs to find their way, Laxmi. You know that.’

Kavya’s mother had said nothing (she who always had to have the last word and never ran out of things to say), instead silently picking up some syrupy tubes of jalebi and turning away from both her mother and her daughter.

Ajji. If she was here now, she would open her arms and fold Kavya into them: ‘Don’t worry, child. It will all work out, time will heal all wounds. You’ll be fine.’ She would spout platitudes but somehow, coming from her, they would feel fresh and true.

‘The gleaming object…’ her mother is saying, ‘…was a gold bangle glinting in the sun, clinging to a pile of bones from a child’s body, splayed across a mound of disintegrating bricks – which led to a temple, of all things.’

‘No!’ Kavya sees in her head a child’s small bones, smooth and shiny white, glistening among the verdant green like teeth in an alien’s head. The gold bangle an anomaly. Bricks slippery with moss leading up to a secret temple, hidden from the world. She shivers.

‘Yes.’

‘But… This happened in Doddanahalli. How has it made the national news?’ Even as she asks the question, Kavya knows. She sees eager bodies pressing upon the temple, intruding into this space that has lain secret for… Decades? Centuries? The hot, sweet smell of perspiration and fresh gossip. Awed whispers growing, becoming rumbles, spreading outwards. And amidst it all, bones lying uncovered. Small, forlorn. A tiny bangle circling a creamy wristbone. Shouting a story that nobody knows but everyone wants to claim, to narrate.

‘Wait for it… After that, there was no hiding the temple from the world. Rumours abounded – they are still doing so. Tales flying that this temple too hides a treasure trove within its foundations like the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple in Trivandrum. A sanyasi wants to take up residence at the temple under the peepal trees, which he says must be left alone, as they’ve been guarding the temple and are holy. A priest has arrived, ready to start doing pujas, as soon as the temple site and the temple itself is cleared of the vegetation that has encroached upon it. There’s a long line of people eager to worship…’

Kavya pictures the scene: the calm of the jungle, populated by birdsong and monkey-chatter, inundated by people, hordes of them, chasing away the