In the Convent of Little Flowers by Indu Sundaresan

Author:Indu Sundaresan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781416586104
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2008-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Nathan washes up over the dirt around the verandah, leaning over the perimeter of concrete as his wife upends a brass chombu filled with water over his hands; eventually, she asks, “Enough?” in a sharp-edged tone. She has also heard the word raja from her daughter’s mouth, and everything she forced herself to forget has returned.

A shouting rage rises within Nathan because she dares to take her dissatisfaction out on him. He struggles to retain the shreds of his shattered dignity. He has never had to raise his voice at his wife, beat his daughters, lower himself by making noise in front of the others in the barracks. Well, only once he had to, but that was an anger like none else—it had swept through his blood, set him on fire, nearly killed him.

He ignores his wife, ponderously silent as he pads down the verandah steps to the bottommost one, where he sits down. His wife brings him the vetalaipaak, and dutifully makes up a parcel of betel leaves and nuts. Nathan wedges the vetalaipaak between his back molars and his cheek and sucks the leafy juice into his throat. When the betel has softened and leaked out all of its redness, he will move it between his jaws, chew out the last of the juice, and then spit it out.

By now, almost everyone in the barracks is outside on the verandah, squatting over their own steps, separated from one another by a few yards at most, but they all look ahead into the darkness of the tamarind tree, and if they talk, it is with low nighttime voices, fatigued and musical.

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