When we reached the first village, Karappuram, he threaded his way through it, hand on horn, swerving to avoid a fruit stall or a chicken or a man being shaved. He sighed a lot and occasionally glared at me through the rearview mirror. But I didn’t care, because as we headed out into the immense skies, the green fields, the pearly water, I felt I could breathe again, because in spite of all my terrors, this was the first step. I was going to work again. I was going to work. I’d never understood before what a salve it was in times of trouble. Work stopped me from minding about Amma, particularly at meals when she was so silent. It gave me less time to worry about Anto, who was still trying to find a job and away as much as he was home. All of us, I suppose, have parts of us that are like foreign countries even to ourselves, but I kept remembering our first day at Mangalath and that strange new look, both embarrassed and challenging, he’d given me when he dropped his suit on the floor and wrapped the strip of cloth around his waist as if to say, This is who I am now, like it or lump it.
