When the night, like watery ink, had leaked across the sky, when the first delicate dusting of stars appeared overhead, when the fruit vendor parked across the street began to move away with his plaintive cries trailing behind him like rags, the year when the little sister turned ten and skinny, and the older sister, 16 and tall, when they turned on the lights in their house, methodically flicking on switch after switch, that’s when news of Rajan’s death spread through the neighbourhood. He’d been missing for two days and they’d finally found him at the bottom of the local pond. The two girls wanted to go down the road right away to see the body, only to see if it still looked like Rajan, the little sister explained.

“Of course it does!” their mother replied, “What do you expect?”
But she also insisted that they could wait till the next morning, it was after sunset, she said, after they’d washed our hands and feet in readiness for bed, after their compound gate had been locked, after she had strung the jasmine for the next day’s worship and wrapped it in a damp leaf. “After all these years!” she said, “the man is actually dead! Who’d believe it?”
So the girls had to wait till daybreak, though they barely slept. It seemed like there were streams of people shuffling up and down the street through the night, and the little sister, still beside herself with excitement, wondered if the dead man also walked on ghostly feet, and if that muffled sound they heard carried by the damp, cool breeze every now and then was the sound of weeping.

The large living room of the dead man’s house was crowded with the concerned and the curious. Rajan had not been popular in life because he’d not only been the richest man in this small town, he’d also been the most arrogant. The little sister looked at the shrouded body and wondered if there was algae still entangled in his hair and scum in his spongy lungs. The older sister thought about how once, racing down the street, she’d run headlong into Rajan and he’d looked down at her from what seemed a tremendous height and asked in an icy voice if she was blind or simply a fool. She was a proud girl and dumbstruck with rage, she’d not answered.

But their thoughts were interrupted. A whisper ran through the room and the crowds at the door parted to let someone in. She was dressed in widow-white, she who was known to wear the brightest of saris and the gaudiest of jewels.
“What is this!” someone panted in excitement. “What is this now!”
“What’s what?” the little sister piped up.
“Nothing,” their mother muttered, pinching her arm to hush her up.
But she was wrong. It was something.

“That one was his first woman,” the older sister whispered importantly to the younger one. “And the other one was his other.” This information did not seem to excite the child though it had created little dust clouds of excitement in the room. No one had imagined that she, Rajan’s mistress, would actually come here. She paused only for an instant before she made her way, as bold as brass, as cool as ice, as grand as a goddess, to the head of the bed – the position of the lawful wife, who was already seated there, head appropriately lowered, dressed dutifully in white.