It would come. It was bound to come—sooner or later.
Chapter 2
At the age of twenty-one, Megha Ramnath was not only married for a year but was about to be executed. In the damp, foggy darkness of the night, she stood outside the woodshed, her brows drawn in puzzlement, the loose end of her plain blue cotton sari tightly drawn around her slim shoulders. Had she heard correctly, or was her mind playing strange tricks on her?
Standing on her toes, she peeped into the shed’s window, secretly listening to her would-be murderers whispering, hatching their sinister plan to finish her off.
There was no light anywhere except for the ominous, dull yellow glow coming from the kandeel. Lantern. It barely illuminated the woodpile leaning against the wall in the corner and the two tins of kerosene standing nearby. The concrete floor, reduced to a blotchy gray from decades of sawdust, oil stains, and dirt, looked grungier than ever.
Icy fingers crept down the nape of her neck, telling her something was not quite right. What was it she sensed? What unexplained electric charge sent chills up and down her spine? Megha strained to listen, trying to make sense of the conversation going on inside the shed.
Kuppu, the fat old calico cat, sat huddled at her feet, shuddering, sending tremors up Megha’s legs. Was it experiencing the same eerie feeling she was? Cats could sense danger better than humans. The leaves rustled in the nearby guava tree, making her jump. She looked up, afraid to breathe, but realized it was only some night creature stirring—perhaps a bird disturbed by Kuppu’s presence. Just then Kuppu’s back lifted in an arch—a definite sign of fear. And Megha’s breathing turned ragged.
Then it dawned on her. Her large dark eyes opened wide with alarm. She was going to be killed! Realization struck her like a punch in the stomach. Terror replaced numbing shock, sending her heartbeat soaring.
Oh, God! Could this really be happening to her? And why? She was an ordinary housewife with a boring life; she had no enemies. She was considered pretty, but it couldn’t possibly be a reason for anyone to kill her. She had no particular talents and posed no threat to anyone. Although her life meant little to anybody but herself, her death would mean even less.
And yet, she was going to be murdered!
The most puzzling part of the mystery was that her executioners were none other than her husband, Suresh Ramnath, and his ferocious mother, Chandramma Ramnath. The children in the family called her Amma. In their native Kannada language, Amma meant mother, but since she was also the eldest female in the family, she was Amma to all the kids, including nieces and nephews. Even the male servant who came in daily to wash the clothes and mop the floors addressed her as Amma-bai. Bai was the respectful Indian equivalent of the English term madam.
Despite what was going on in the woodshed, the surrounding scene looked perfectly normal. The nondescript Ramnath home, with its sooty windows and aged concrete frame, was like many other homes in Cantonment Galli or Street—single-storied, with three bedrooms and a small backyard. The houses were dark, boxy squares rising out of the fog.
The neighborhood was middle-class, where most of the women stayed home and cooked and raised the children while the men held office jobs or owned small businesses. Most every family had a servant come in daily for an hour or two to perform the menial tasks—not a luxury but a necessity. Very rarely did this class of folks travel for pleasure. They ate at a restaurant or went to the cinema perhaps once a month. Money was usually tight and every rupee had to be saved for the children’s futures.
At this late hour, the rural town of Palgaum was asleep. Even the most vigilant watchdogs dozed in languorous abandon in the sultry humidity of the tropical October night. The last show at the movie theaters had let out and the crowds had gone home to their beds. Except for a handful of individuals who had business staying awake, like night-shift guards and policemen, nurses minding hushed hospital wards, industrious prostitutes, and the occasional nocturnal youth or drunk loitering on a darkened street, the place was tranquil. A fine, damp mist had wound its way from the river and spread like a ghostly shroud, while a silent quarter-moon watched over the slumbering town.
After long hours of slogging in the kitchen to keep her husband and in-laws well-fed and content, Megha usually slept like the dead. It was her sole escape from a life she had slowly come to abhor—her only relief for those aching feet, back, and arms that resulted from shopping for endless lists of rations and hauling them home on foot, grinding spices, coconut and various kinds of batters on the heavy grinding stone, serving meals, and handling heavy pots of steaming food and buckets of bath water. One of the advantages of being so young was the ability to sink into oblivion once her head settled on the pillow each night.
And yet, a little earlier, startled by an odd sound, her eyelids had flown open in an instant. It was different from the normal nightly cacophony of snores coming from her in-laws’ room. She could only hear her father-in-law, Vinayak Ramnath, or Appaji as the kids called him, snoring in the master bedroom, and her teenaged sister-in-law, Shanti, breathing like a muffled whistle in her room across the passageway.
But what about Amma, her mother-in-law, the Amazon witch? The older woman’s notorious snoring was ominously absent. It was generally riotous enough to disturb anyone within a hundred meters. Was that corpulent mass of a woman, Chandramma, lying awake? Was she hatching another one of her twisted plans to make Megha’s life even more difficult?
After a minute, Megha recognized the peculiar sound. It was the door to the small storage shed that sat at a little distance from the rear of the house and contained their monthly supply of wood and kerosene. The hinges on the door were rusty and squeaked every time it was opened or shut. It was a familiar echo from her daily trips to the shed to haul in the wood for the kitchen and bathroom hearths. The Ramnaths were too stingy for a gas stove, and the daily bath water was heated in a big brass cauldron because electricity was both expensive and unreliable.
Megha’s breath caught on the possibility that she might have forgotten to lock the shed before retiring for the night. Amma would surely take her to task for such carelessness. Her fierce and tyrannical mother-in-law would never tolerate incompetence on Megha’s part. A young daughter-in-law could not afford to make even trivial mistakes. A bride had to earn her keep and the right to be called a good Brahmin wife.
Megha turned around in bed, wondering if her husband, Suresh, had heard the noise. She was mystified to find him missing. Generally he’d be huddled under the sheet beside her, his bony buttocks sticking out at a strange angle, his wide-lipped mouth hanging open in deep, childlike slumber.
Frowning, she glanced at the bedside clock. The neon-red digital display read 12:23 AM. The bedroom door was ajar. Where could Suresh be? It was a warm night and she’d wondered if he’d gone for a glass of water. She herself had awakened perspiring. Her thick, long plait lay limply against her moist back. Her sari clung to her hips and legs.
Sleeping in a sari, which was six long yards of fabric, was terribly uncomfortable and impractical, but in an old-fashioned family such as this, she was not allowed to wear nightgowns or kaftans. There were established rules of etiquette and attire for ladies. Amma had made them clear right from the beginning. “Those silly gowns and frocks that show the legs and bosoms are not allowed in our house, okay? Ladies in our house only wear saris.”
Assuming Suresh was probably in the kitchen or bathroom, Megha called out to him. She received no reply.
That was when the first faint ripple of fear crossed her mind. Could a burglar have broken into their shed? Thefts were not uncommon around this neighborhood, and wood and kerosene were expensive commodities.
Her next thought made her sit up in stark alarm. Oh my God! Someone is stealing our firewood and Suresh is trying to confront them—all one hundred and five pounds of him. They’ll crush him to a pulp! Her heartbeat had leapt in panic. He needs my help.
She