“They say she had an abortion. What courage she must have had.”
“Really? Those people from that family are like that, you know.”
“I heard Selvi packed her things and went back to her parents’ home.”
“Girls these days have no patience at all. Were we ever like that, Bhagiyamma?”
“Yes, Lillikka. All right, I’ll see you.”
When they reached the turns leading to their respective homes, the women parted. Along with them, the story of Selvi also travelled down two different streets.
Sugandhi understood very clearly whom the women had been talking about. Thoughts of Selvi now began to surround her like a spider’s web.
Sugandhi’s husband’s family was a fairly large one. The houses of two closely related branches of the family stood next to each other, along with extensive stretches of land. Sugandhi’s father-in-law and his own younger brother had lived in adjoining houses.
Behind Sugandhi’s house was a yard, and the wall separating it from the neighbouring house was only four feet high. When the two families had maintained a warm relationship, they had often spoken to one another from their own homes. Food cooked in one house would be passed over the wall to the other, and whatever was prepared there would be exchanged in return. Those had been the golden days of the two families.
At one point, a dispute over property caused the two brothers to fall out. The women of the households were forced to keep their distance as well. Sugandhi and Maria, the wife of the younger brother in the neighbouring family, had once shared a close friendship. But, unwilling to anger their respective families, they stopped talking. Their friendship remained only in their exchanged glances.
The houses were built in such a way that what was said there could be heard here, and what was said here could be heard there. The older members of the two families—the fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law—would sometimes scold one another, either openly or through hints, from opposite sides of the little wall. Yet nobody ever raised the wall. Nor did anyone hide in secret merely because they feared that the other side might hear. The wall did not remain merely a wall; it became a bridge between the two families, allowing a kind of indirect conversation to continue.
When Maria died, the cries of her family reached Sugandhi through that very wall. Unable to go to their house that day, Sugandhi stood beside the wall and cried until her heart had emptied itself of grief.
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